[ad_1]
Indigenous individuals name upon govt. issued forward of its assembly with leaders of 6 communities
An indigenous attorneys’ collective has referred to as upon the Assam authorities not to “destroy the tribal communities” of the State by granting Scheduled Tribe status to six non-tribal communities.
The Indigenous Lawyers’ Association of India (ILAI) made the attraction forward of a gathering between the group of Ministers headed by Himanta Biswa Sarma and leaders of the six communities on October 8.
The six communities demanding ST status in Assam are Koch-Rajbongshi, Tai-Ahom, Chutia, Matak, Moran and Tea Tribes.
“There are communities among the six who have never been considered as tribes by any government or anthropological study and they do not possess any characteristics that tribal people do. Hence, the Assam government’s proposed inclusion of some socio-economically advanced and populous communities in the list of STs is mala fide and it shall eliminate the very concept of ‘tribals’ in India,” ILAI president Dilip Kanti Chakma stated on Wednesday.
“Some of these communities are identified as Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and there is no provision in law to transport them from OBC to ST. While the OBC categorisation is based on caste, the STs are totally on a different footing,” he added.
If these communities are included within the record of the STs, the social and academic well-being and political illustration from Gram Sabha to the Lok Sabha of the present STs of Assam shall be affected and the already marginalised STs shall be additional marginalised, the ILEA stated.
Groups such because the All Assam Tribal Sangha and the Coordination Committee of the Tribal Organisations of Assam have been opposing the transfer to grant ST status to the six communities, particularly the Koch-Rajbongshi and Tai-Ahom who reigned over massive swathes of present-day Assam, Bangladesh and West Bengal in the course of the medieval interval.
The tribal teams have been mentioning that granting ST status to the six communities would violate India’s assurances to the United Nations (UN) to get hold of free, prior and knowledgeable consent of the indigenous individuals earlier than adopting and implementing any legislative measures which can be in opposition to the provisions of Article 19 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples.
India had supported the declaration adopted by the UN’s General Assembly on September 13, 2007.
[ad_2]
