It was accepted that the leader must be only from the majority or Bahujan Samaj community. Bhausaheb Bandodkar, Shashikala Kakodkar and then Pratapsingh Rane became the chief ministers of the State because of that very same majority-oriented ideology. No one could even think of anyone becoming chief minister if he did not belong to the Bahujan community. Eventually and gradually the political scene changed with Churchill Alemao breaking the tradition by becoming first Catholic chief minister of the State followed by Luis Proto Barbosa. After that whoever claimed the chief ministerial post did it out of necessity. Ravi Naik, a Bahujan leader, became chief minister, courtesy to fraudulent politics. The narrative that only a Bahujan leader should become the chief minister slowly became a myth so much so that no one has felt the need to even discuss it in recent years. Now, the debate around Bahujan Samaj has been suddenly raised again by Congress’ former State president Girish Chodankar and few other leaders. They have staged a protest demanding reservation for SC, ST and OBC candidates in educational institutions and have also accused the Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant to be anti-majority. He also added to his long list of accusations that the ministers in the current government belonging to Bahujan Samaj have forgotten that they represent the Bahujan community. His accusations are not agreeable. In fact, the government is not just of the Bahujan community but should be representative of all the communities and religions. Therefore Chodankar’s expectations are unfair. Of course, the people of Bahujan Samaj must get whichever rights given to them by the law and Chodankar can form his demands on those lines. According to him, why is an OBC candidate not selected in the general category during the recruitment process? Are the exams given by him/her/they limited to their category only? The OBC, ST and SC candidates are nowhere to be seen in the general category then how come this government is working towards Bahujan Samaj?
The only thing his questions underline is that he has not understood the recruitment process properly. How can the candidates from OBC, SC and ST be in the general category? And if they are, then what is the point of reservations? During the recruitment the seats for reserved as well as general category are announced and the applicants apply to the posts based on which category they fall under. So isn’t it understood that the candidates of SC, ST and OBC will apply for the seats reserved for them? Hence, if they get selected they will be selected in their respective categories and not in the general category.
It’s the same as a candidate from general category will not be selected in reserved category and if that happens it will be considered as a malpractice. One thing for sure, a candidate from ST, SC or OBC can apply for the general category posts and may get selected as well. However, that rarely happens and if it ever does then the candidate should consider himself extremely lucky. But just because it does not happen often it is not right to consider the government as anti-Bahujan. In fact Chodankar should try to understand what the common people have to say. The people say that candidates in reserved categories should apply only for reserved categories. What does Chodankar have to say about that? His demand is that there should be reservations for SC, ST and OBC in Dental College. There is no problem in such a demand; he should in fact insist on it. But some things are not always in the government’s control and take time to happen.
There has been a demand to include the Dhangar community in ST category for years which is not fulfilled and there are several reasons for that. There have been governments in the past who were in absolute favour of this demand but it never came to fruition. Whereas now there is a double-engine government which should make this even more easier but it does not seem so.
Chodankar and leaders with the similar stance should definitely put forth their demands but should also need to think twice if they were to weave their demands with accusations as the actual intent is sidelined. To add to the complexity, they also tend to lose support of the people. Another severe accusation he made is that the ministers from the Bahujan community have forgotten that they represent Bahujan Samaj. Does this accusation make any sense? How is one minister supposed to behave? Once a leader takes a ministerial oath he should forget which community and religion he belongs to. He is supposed to work for all the people which the Bahujan community is also part of. Of course, the demands of any community must be heard, however the way Chodankar is trying to portray the government to be anti-Bahujan is unfair and pointless.
