In a letter to Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda on Friday, CM Patnaik reiterated the demand that more than 160 communities in Odisha be included to the state’s ST (Schedule Tribe) list. In the state, the Schedule Tribes (ST) make up over 22% of the total population.
Nine proposals from Odisha were recommended by a Task Force under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in 2014 as priority cases for inclusion in the ST list of the state, although the same have not yet been announced in the Presidential order.
With the approval of the Tribes Advisory Council, the government of Odisha has recommended more than 160 groups for inclusion in the state’s ST list to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs since 1978. Some of them are brand-new additions. Others include sub-tribes/subsets, synonyms, and phonetic variations of the current ST communities, which are found throughout the State but are not eligible for the same benefits as STs despite sharing the same tribal characteristics as the respective notified STs, according to Patnaik.
‘I am given to understand that a Task Force under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs had recommended 9 proposals from Odisha as priority cases for inclusion in the ST list of the state in the year 2014, but the same is yet to be notified in the Presidential Order,’ the CM said.
Therefore, he wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided to the media, ‘I would kindly request you to kindly look into this long pending matter and expedite the scheduling of these left-out communities to deliver social justice to them in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of India.’
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