BHUBANESWAR: Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda on Saturday accused the state government of unnecessarily blaming the Centre over the inclusion of 169 communities in the Scheduled Tribes (ST) list without doing proper homework.
Addressing a media conference here, Munda said the state government has recommended names of 71 communities for inclusion in the ST list without any ethnographic study and supporting documents.
“Strangely, two of the 13 particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) of Odisha still do not figure in the list of Scheduled Tribes of the state,” Munda said.
He said Chuktia Bhunjia and Paudi Bhuiyans have been recognised as PVTGs but they are not included in the ST list of the state.
Stating that this should not be made a political issue, the Union minister said 13 proposals of the state has been cleared and another 36 including 10 recommended recently are pending for scrutiny and approval of the Registrar General of India (RGI).
He said 71 out of 110 proposals are without ethnographic study and have no official data to support the claim. The ministry has rejected 38 proposals while seeking additional information pertaining to five proposals.
The process to include tribes in the ST list begins with the recommendation from the respective state governments, which are then sent to the Tribal Affairs Ministry for review and forwarding to the Registrar General of India for approval. This is followed by the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes’ approval before the list is sent to the Cabinet for a final decision.
Munda said the Odisha government has neither conducted any anthropological study of tribes since 1979 nor has any records or archives of the tribal communities of the state.
The ruling BJD is on the offensive ever since the Centre informed the Lok Sabha during the winter session that it has not received new proposals from the Odisha government during the last three years for the inclusion of communities in the ST list.
Responding to the concern expressed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik over the drastic reduction of funds for MGNREGS, Munda said the scheme is demand-driven and funds are made available to the state as per their requirement.