OUR CORRESPONDENT
KOKRAJHAR: Tribal Rights Protection Association (TRPA) on Thursday accused Assam Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma of applying a dishonest diplomacy to grant ST status to six communities of Assam by violating the existing criteria and said that they would fight the misadventurous attempt of Sarma against the indigenous tribal communities.
The President of the TRPA, Janaklal Basumatary, said that the Chief Minister’s statement over ST status to six communities was a dishonest diplomacy to harm the weaker section of society. He said that the AATS and its Coordination Committee of Tribal Organization Assam (CCTOA) had been vehemently opposing the move to grant ST status to six communities as there was no provision to grant ST to any community by ministers’ negotiation with the organizations of existing ST communities. He said that this would amount to forcible persuasion by powerful groups for the weaker section to accept their proposition even at the cost of harming the latter’s interest. He also said that they must explain why the OBC reservation beneficiaries needed ST reservation benefits even downgrading their existing social, educational, cultural, political, economic, and linguistic status.
“There will be adverse effects to existing tribal communities even if their ST reservation quota is transferred from OBC quota or even from general quota. The common land right and political rights will be severely affected,” he said, adding that the existing STs would remain as oppressed and suppressed classes of people of Assam. This will defeat the constitutional purpose to push up the weaker section of society to the level of advanced society, he added.
He questioned why the group of ministers wanted to get more IAS officers from the ST category rather than from the OBCs and said that this clearly indicated that this would impact the existing STs in all India competitions.
Basumatary said that the Group of Ministers’ report was not the constitutional process of granting ST status to any community as the GoM committee was constituted by the Chief Minister of Assam, but that the committee if required must be constituted by the President of India to avoid political bias.
Also read: Assam:Thousands rally against ST status for six communities in Dokmoka