THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A small section of Scheduled Castes in the Malabar region who had found their way to the category by unfair means has siphoned off the benefits of a vast majority of the marginalised sections in their fold, Government Chief Whip P C George has alleged.
Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, George said that till 1975, there was a clear picture of SC/STs in the state.
Accordingly, those in the ‘parava’ community in areas like Palakkad, Wayanad, Kozhikode, Kannur and Malappuram districts but who had permission to enter temples, were not included in the list of Scheduled Castes and were marked as OECs. At the same time, those in the community and who were living in Kochi and Travancore regions were listed under Scheduled Castes.
But a document brought out to redefine the contours of Assembly and Lok Sabha segments during the Emergency period was misinterpreted by the then director of KIRTADS P R G Mathur, and communities like ‘paravakurup’ and ‘vettuvan’ and four other communities were included in the SC list.
Later two communities ‘vettuvan’ and ‘theeya thandan’ domiciled in Palakkad district were excluded, he said. Presenting documents to justify his stance including the alleged role of KIRTADS former director in the issue, George said that the pension benefits of the former were slashed to one-third when he retired from service in 1989. Though he had approached the High Court, no reprieve was granted.
However, when A K Balan became the SC-ST Welfare Minister in the V S Achuthanandan government, all benefits were restored through an order, George claimed.
The Chief Whip, who is under fire for his alleged derisive casteist remarks against Balan in his controversial Pathanapuram speech, maintained a cautious line in his remarks against Balan.
“The government should constitute a commission to set the record straight and ensure that the benefits are given only to the neglected lot among the Scheduled Castes,’’ George said.
George said that according to the latest statistics, only 22,600 members are there in the ‘paravakurup’ community, which forms just 1.4 per cent of the 33 lakh-strong Scheduled Caste population in the state. Likewise, a few other communities in the Malabar region are also the major beneficiaries at the cost of a vast majority.
In effect, a small section had been grabbing all the benefits due to more than 80 per cent, he charged. George claimed that since 1979, there had been no provision in the PSC ranklist to mention the community in the SC list. This has effectively blocked chances of detecting any possible fraud, he said.