Mumbai, Feb 16 (PTI) The Bombay High Court on Friday dismissed a bunch of petitions seeking the Scheduled Tribes (ST) status for the Dhangar (shepherd) community in Maharashtra.
The community wrongly got listed as Dhangar' instead of 'Dhangad' due to a typographical error and excluded from the ST category as a result, the petitioners claimed.<br>A bench of Justices Gautam S Patel and Kamal R Khata, however, held the petitioners could not establish that the 'Dhangad' community did not exist separately in the erstwhile state of Bombay when it was mentioned in a Presidential Order issued in 1950.<br>The Presidential Order (PO) and subsequent Government Order (amendment) of 1956 includedDhangad' community in the ST category, but not the Dhangars.
The Dhangar community in the state has been agitating for reservation benefits under the ST quota for quite some time.
The issue was whether the community known as 'Dhangar' was indistinguishable from `Dhangad', the high court said.
The PO was based on Articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution, and such Articles are special provisions allowing affirmative action for certain communities to get reservation and other advantages, the HC said. Article 342 empowers President to notify any community as Scheduled Tribes.
"If these entries are to be constantly modified, changed or chopped, it will result in chaos in administration and no person will know whether benefit availed today is liable to be taken away by judicial fiat tomorrow or what the consequences are likely to be," the bench observed while rejecting the petitioner's demand.