6 months ago
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The All Assam Tribal Students’ Union (AATSU) has petitioned President Droupadi Murmu against adding six large taste communities successful Assam to the country’s Scheduled Tribes (ST) list.
Organisations of 14 tribes successful Assam are opposed to a Group of Ministers study that proposes ways of granting the ST presumption to these six communities — Adivasi oregon ‘Tea Tribes’, Chutia, Koch-Rajbongshi, Matak, Moran, and Tai Ahom. The study was tabled successful the 126-member State Assembly connected November 29.
In a memorandum submitted to the President via the District Commissioner successful occidental Assam’s Kokrajhar, the AATSU said the connection was “anti-tribal” and warned that expanding the ST database without a broad societal appraisal would dilute the Constitutional protections for Assam’s existing tribes.
Smaller indigenous groups, including the Bodos, Rabhas, and Misings, could endure important setbacks if larger and much socio-economically established communities are granted ST status, the organisation argued.
Including the six communities successful the ST database could jeopardise preservation benefits, payment schemes, and different socio-economic safeguards designed for genuinely marginalised tribal communities, the AATSU said. It besides pointed retired that the six communities “do not conscionable the parameters” laid down by the Lokur Committee, the long-established model utilized to find eligibility for inclusion arsenic STs.
The organisation said these criteria see proven societal and acquisition backwardness, a chiseled and preserved taste identity, and elements of geographical isolation.
Citing past ineligible judgments and Assam’s existing preservation matrix, the AATSU urged the President to not o.k. the connection successful its existent form. “Any aboriginal information indispensable beryllium preceded by an impartial, evidence-based survey conducted by experts successful anthropology, Constitutional law, and tribal welfare,” it said.
