A state for the excluded

Ten tribes in Uttar Pradesh are unable to contest elections due to the mismatch between census data and government data.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati recently called for a separate Bundelkhand state. Will that make the tribals of the area less marginalised? The chief minister should know better.

In 2002, the state government under her notified 10 scheduled caste (SC) communities as tribes. These were Gond, Kharwar, Chero, Baiga, Bhuia, Panika, Pathari, Agaria, Parahiya and Sahariya. It left out Kols, the oldest and the largest tribe.

But the 2001 census did not include these tribes. So, they are now deprived of the benefits that SCs and scheduled tribes (ST) get, to the extent of being excluded from all elections, besides all government schemes for SCs/STs.

Take Jabaar, a village in Duddhi block of Sonbhadra district of the state. According to the 2001 census, it does not have any ST. But, according to the new list of notified tribes in 2002, Jaabar has only STs and no SC. Many villages in Uttar Pradesh’s 19 tribal-dominated districts are facing this problem. Karaia, another SC village in Duddhi block of the district, has no panchayat as its residents belong to a tribe.

Another instance is Nagwa village in the same block. Its population is tribal but the seat is reserved for SCs. So, when panchayat elections took place four years ago, the only candidate was an outsider the villagers had hired some years ago to work there. He was a Kotwar, an SC, whose work was to beat drums and make announcements for the tribes.

Today, he is the panchayat president. All his six family members form the rest of the panchayat. These villages will remain unrepresented even after the next panchayat elections that are to be held five months from now.

The tribals in Sonbhadra are angry. Displacement is adding to their woes as the district’s new power plants get ready to meet over 50 per cent of the country’s power needs. They find themselves losing not only their land, clean air and rivers but also their right to contest elections. The only ones eager to show sympathy to these villagers are Naxalite visitors from Chtattisgarh and Jharkhand.

The tribal aspirants for Assembly and Parliament seats share the plight. Not even one Assembly seat out of 403 is for STs, while 80 seats are reserved for SCs. So, Vijay Singh Gond, who was elected as an MLA as an SC seven times from Duddhi, was not allowed to contest last time as he was not an SC anymore. He had become a tribal.

The census will not recognise these tribes unless the home ministry demands it. A petition is pending in the Supreme Court.

Another fallout of this is that central funds are not being allotted according to the new population of the tribals but according to the census data.

Officials say the 8,37,118 tribals population of the state, according to per 2001 census, has shot by 2 per cent after these 10 tribes were notified. So much for inclusion, not to speak of protection of identities and tribal legacies.