Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda. File
| Photo Credit: PTI
Rajya Sabha on December 14 passed the Constitution (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) Order (Second Amendment) Bill that aims to move the Gond community from the Scheduled Castes list to Scheduled Tribes list in four districts of Uttar Pradesh (Chandauli, Kushinagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, and Sant Ravidas Nagar), shortly after Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda made his concluding remarks on the Bill.
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The Bill was passed in Lok Sabha in April this year. It was discussed at length on December 13 in Rajya Sabha, when around 26 MPs spoke on it, with members supporting the legislation across party lines but the Opposition MPs insisting on considering the addition of other communities and the conducting of a caste-based census so that these additions can be made on the basis of accurate data.
INC MP Pramod Tiwari had on Tuesday also asked why the Gond community’s ST status was being restricted to just four districts.
In response to the discussion, Mr. Munda on Tuesday said that the issue pertaining to the inclusion of the Gond community in U.P. had been pending with successive Congress-led governments from 1981 and even after 1993, when the Office of the Registrar General of India had also recognised this demand and supported it.
“But under the leadership of PM Modi, our government is finally getting to solving these problems and this is not the end. We will soon bring Bills to add communities to ST lists in Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and other States and our commitment is steadfast in this regard,” he said, alluding to Congress governments’ “approach toward tribes and tribal development” by noting that no previous Congress-led government had brought this Bill despite the files for it pending for decades.
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While replying to Opposition MPs on the inclusion of other communities, Mr. Munda stressed on the importance of continuing with the existing criteria for defining tribes as set out by the Lokur Committee in the 1960s, making it clear that his government does not intend to change this set of five criteria.
He said, “Tribal societies live on the basis of their characteristic traits. These are not societies that change.”
The five criteria as set out by the Lokur Committee include: indications of primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large, and backwardness.
The Union government was until recently considering a proposal to revise this criteria based on the report of a Task Force formed under the leadership of then Tribal Affairs Secretary, Hrusikesh Panda in February 2014. The Task Force had called the criteria “obsolete” and said that they were ending up standing in the way of several communities that deserve ST status but are not being considered. But the government has now put the proposal on hold, as reported by Today News 24 last month.
