6 months ago
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GUWAHATI Thousands of Tai Ahom radical staged a torch rally successful eastbound Assam’s Moran municipality connected Tuesday (October 28, 2025) evening, demanding Scheduled Tribe (ST) presumption for their community.
Moran, successful the Dibrugarh district, is much than 400 km eastbound of Guwahati.
The torch rally, organised by community-based organisations including the Tai Ahom Yuba Parishad, Assam (TAYPA) and the All-Tai Ahom Students’ Union (ATASU), follows akin demonstrations by organisations of different communities besides demanding the ST status.
The Tai Ahoms are among six communities seeking ST presumption for much than 2 decades. The others are the Adivasi (loosely referred to arsenic “tea tribes”, comprising astir 95 ethnicities), Chutia, Koch-Rajbanshi, Matak, and Moran. They are presently successful the Other Backward Class category.
They person been exerting unit connected the Bharatiya Janata Party-led authorities to fulfil the committedness of granting them ST presumption made up of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
TAYPA president Diganta Tamuly said the Tai Ahoms would boycott the BJP up of the adjacent Assembly polls, scheduled for May 2026, if it fails to present connected its promises. “We person been waiting for much than a decade. The BJP volition look terrible backlash if their betrayal connected the ST presumption contented continues,” helium said.
The BJP had promised ST presumption for the six communities during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2014 parliamentary predetermination run successful Assam.
The Ahoms, who person ruled ample swathes of present-day Assam for six centuries, wield important electoral power successful the eastbound Assam districts of Charaideo, Dhemaji, Dibrugarh, Golaghat, Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Sivasagar, and Tinsukia. The Adivasis, comprising a tad little than 20% of Assam’s voters, are besides a potent voting unit successful these districts and beyond.
Panel report
ST presumption has been a large contented successful astir elections successful Assam since the Koch-Rajbanshis were temporarily connected the tribal database successful the 1990s. Their exclusion followed beardown protests from the existing tribal groups, including the Bodos, Karbis, Mishings, and Rabhas.
Indicating that the authorities hopes to find a “middle path” to resoluteness the differences betwixt the six communities seeking ST presumption and the existing ST groups, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had advised the six communities to hold for the Group of Ministers study connected the issue.
The study is apt to beryllium tabled successful the 126-member State Assembly connected November 25.
The Coordinating Committee of Tribal Organisations of Assam (CCTOA), representing Assam’s tribes, has been opposing the determination to assistance ST presumption to the six “advanced taste groups”, informing that specified a measurement would “destroy” Assam’s tribes by eating into the rights and privileges they presently enjoy.
The CCTOA cited humanities examples, pointing retired that the Ahoms ruled Assam for six centuries, the Chutias had their ain kingdom earlier the Ahoms, and the Koch-Rajbanshis are a heterogeneous radical with interior divisions isolated from having ruled ample areas of Assam, West Bengal, and present-day Bangladesh.
The All Assam Tribal Sangha maintained that the Adivasis, settled by British beverage planters from cardinal and eastbound India, were not indigenous capable to merit ST status. It besides pointed to “interstate complications” arsenic hurdles successful their “tribalisation”.
