The long-pending demand for reservation under the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category to the Dhangar community in Maharashtra has come to fore once again with the government announcing that it would rename the Ahmednagar district after Ahilyadevi Holkar, the Holkar-queen of the Maratha-Malwa kingdom.
Ahilyabai Holkar was born at Chaundi in Ahmednagar district to a Dhangar family and was married to Khanderao Holkar of the Holkar dynasty of Indore.
On the occasion of the 298th birth anniversary of Ahilyabai Holkar on May 31, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis visited Chondi, where the formal announcement was made to rename Ahmednagar as the ‘Punyashlok’ Ahilya Devi Holkar.
The Dhangar (shepard) community is present mainly in Western Maharashtra and Marathwada regions and accounts for over nine per cent of state's population.
The votes of the Dhangar community are important in12 of the 49 Lok Sabha and 80-odd Vidhan Sabha seats.
A majority of the population of the Dhangar community lives in the four districts of Solapur, Satara, Sangli and Pune.
As of now, the Danghar community gets reservation under Vimukta Jati & Nomadic Tribes (VJNT) category of Maharashtra.
The Dhangar community groups had been agitating for reservation in ST category in Maharashtra as the "Dhangad" got reservation in other parts of India in SC category.
A topographical error -- Dhangar (Dhangad) -- has led to the problem and they get reservation in VJNT category in Maharashtra.
Of the total 52 per cent reservation in the state, SCs and STs account for 13 and seven per cent, respectively, OBCs get 19 per cent, VJNT, Special Backward Class and Nomadic Tribes account for 13 per cent.
When the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP-Shiv Sena government was in power from 2014 to 2019, however, things did not move ahead.
It may be mentioned that the Dhangar community forms the major part of BJP's “MaDhaVa” (Mali, Dhangar, Vanjari) political equation that the party developed since the 1980s as an alternative to the Maratha, Dalit, Muslim vote bank politics of the Congress and now the Congress-NCP combine.
The day when Shinde-Fadnavis made the announcement to rename Ahmednagar after Ahilyabai Holkar, veteran BJP leader and Medical Education Minister Girish Mahajan announced that the government medical college in Baramati would be named after the Malwa queen.
Baramati is the home turf of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and his daughter Supriya Sule is the Baramati MP and nephew Ajit Pawar is the Baramati MLA, who is now the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly.
A few years ago, Gopinath Padalkar, who left no chance to target the Pawar-family, was accommodated as a BJP MLC by Fadnavis.
In fact, the demand to rename Aurangabad after Ahilyabai Holkar was moved by Padalkar himself a few months back.