HYDERABAD: Adivasi organisations are enraged over the Tribal Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society releasing notification for conducting entrance test for admissions into MPC, BPC and other intermediate programmes across 88 of its Gurukuls in the State, by allotting maximum number of seats to Lambadas, while allotting ‘zero’ seats to some of the tribal communities in the 14 Centres of Excellence.
Out of 135 seats in each of the Centres of Excellence for admissions in 3 intermediate programmes, 114 seats have been allotted to children from the Lambada community. While 3 seats were allotted to Gond/Nayakpod, 12 to Koyas and one to Yerukala, not even a single seat was allotted to Kolams, Chenchus or Konda Reddys, which have been recognized as the Primitive Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). No seat was allotted to Andh, Pardhans, Mannewar as well.
Whatever was the basis behind the allotment of seats in Centres of Excellence, tribal leaders feel that the same formula based on proportion of population was being used in rest of the 74 Gurukuls, where maximum seats were being allocated to Lambadas.
Adivasi Purohit Pardhan Sankshema Sangham has submitted a memorandum to the Tribal Welfare Department calling out the injustice. “By not following the proper procedure, giving Lambadas ten times the seats is against the spirit of constitution,”said Atram Pentaiah, General Secretary of the organisation.
“It is not only constitutional, but also humanitarian and moral obligation of the administration to treat all tribal communities equally. In the past, the High court of Andhra Pradesh had clearly struck down a similar notification for trying to categorise the STs. While it is true that the population of members of one community is relatively high when compared to other tribal communities, it is unfair to deprive the children from other communities of education just because they are don’t form a majority among the STs,” said Prof Ch Kishore Kumar, Associate Professor at Osmania University Department of Mathematics.
The entrance to these institutions would be held on March 27, 2022.