OUR CORRESPONDENT
KOKRAJHAR: Bodoland Janajati Suraksha Mancha (BJSM) which has been fighting against the anti-tribal agendas of the government and individual has taken up the issue of granting ST status to six unqualified populous communities with the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) urging the Commission to intervention on the move for scheduling six communities in ST list. The BJSM sent a memorandum to the Chairperperson of the NCST on Friday urging immediate intervention to protect rights of existing STs of Assam and to reject the proposal for granting ST status to six ineligible communities.
In the memorandum, the Working President of the BJSM DD Narzary and Secretary Jayanta Boro said the move of the state government to grant Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to six non-eligible communities of Assam-namely Tai Ahom, Moran, Motok, Sutia, Koch- Rajbongshi and Tea Tribes will adversely affected the existing tribals in their constitutional facilities. They said as the apex constitutional body entrusted with safeguarding the rights of tribal communities under Article 338 A, they sought the intervention on the grounds that the six communities do not meet constitutional or ethnographic ST criteria. They said these communities did not satisfy the essential criteria such as primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation and social-economic backwardness and many of them are historically non-indigenous or fully assimilated into mainstream society.
Narzary said the population of six communities far exceeded the existing ST population including these communities in the ST list will overwhelm and dilute the constitutional safeguards meant for genuine tribal communities such as the Bodos and other original tribes of Assam. They also said inclusion of them will threat to land, political rights and identity of existing STs granting ST status to such large populations will directly impact land rights (Sixth Schedule), reservation quotas, political representation and socio-cultural security of the existing ST. They further said the move will be a constitutional violation by the Group of Ministers (GoM) formed by the Assam Government which has no constitutional or legal authority to recommend, classify or create categories like “ST (Plains)” or “ST (Valley)’”. Such subdivisions violate the constitutional identity of STs, they said adding that the NCST and RGI reports cannot be bypassed as per constitutional practice and ST status can be considered only with verified recommendations of NCST and RGI.
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