Kavlekar plays Dhangar card in poll campaign in Karnataka

Margao: Former Quepem MLA Chandrakant Kavlekar used his community card to telling effect during his campaign for BJP in Karnataka for its May 10 assembly elections. Kavlekar, who hails from the Gouly (Dhangar) community of Goa, claimed that he was able to create a significant impact on the Kuruba voters, as the Dhangars are known in Karnataka, during his election campaign in the South Bangalore constituency.
“I was delighted to interact with our Kuruba community leaders of Karnataka,” said Kavlekar, a former deputy chief minister. “I was highly impressed to witness the unity and binding among the community members across the state. I was assured of their wholehearted support for BJP in the upcoming elections.”
Kavlekar, a president of the Gomantak Dhangar Samajonnati Mandal, Goa, and a national executive member of Shepherd India International, is a popular leader among the Dhangar community across the country. He is often invited as a guest for various programmes conducted by the community in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi.
During his latest tour to Bengaluru, he received dozens of felicitations even as hundreds of karyakartas joined him during his door-to-door campaign there, sources associated with Kavlekar’s Karnataka campaign said. He also visited the houses of several prominent karyakartas of the Kuruba community. A public meeting that he addressed in Govindraj constituency had hundreds of prominent leaders of the community.
South Bangalore region covers three parliamentary and 28 assembly constituencies with thousands of voters from the Kuruba community, which has the third largest population in Karnataka.
Interestingly, the Goulys of Goa and the Kurubas of Karnataka share a common pain. While the Dhangar (Gouly) community of Goa has been demanding its inclusion in the scheduled tribes (ST) for over two decades, the Kuruba community, which has been classified as OBC in Karnataka, has been seeking to be reclassified as a scheduled tribe.
The Goulys of Goa had fought alongside the Gawdas, Kunbis and Velips to demand their inclusion in the scheduled tribes category. After a protracted battle, the Gauda, Kunbi and Velip communities were accorded constitutional status as notified tribes of Goa in 2003, but the Dhangars were left out.
Earlier this year, chief minister Pramod Sawant led a delegation to the Registrar General of India (RGI) to pursue the demand for inclusion of the state’s Gouly-Dhangar community in the ST category.