NAGPUR: The Bombay High Court held today that the Gowari community in Maharashtra should get benefits under the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category.
Adim Gowari Samaj Vikas Mandal and some others had moved the Nagpur bench of high court, seeking the status of Scheduled Tribe.
The community had been seeking inclusion in the ST category for long, and a stampede during the community's protest over the issue near the Maharashtra legislature complex here on November 23, 1994 had claimed over 100 lives.
The state government had classified the community under the heading "Gond-Gowari" earlier and put it in the Special Backward Class (SBC) category.
The community had objected to this, saying they were merely Gowari and not "Gond-Gowari", a sub-group of the Gond tribe.
Petitioners' lawyers Narayan Phadnis and Ram Parsodkar argued that classification made by the government was wrong.
The high court, after scrutinising old records, upheld the contention.
"The people belonging to the Gowari community in Maharashtra cannot be denied the benefits of Scheduled Tribes, merely because the Gowari community is shown in the list of Special Backward Class in relation to the state of Maharashtra in the GR (government resolution) dated 13-06-1995 and as OBC category in the Gazette notification dated 16-06-2011," held a division bench of Justices R K Deshpande and Arun Upadhye.
Post-independence, there was no such sub-tribe as "Gond-Gowari", the court noted.