Tribal people continue to be deprived of access to basic amenities even after six decades of Independence. There are 35 tribes in the State and each tribe is restricted in the geographical area, except for a few who have come out for their education or employment.
While members of the 35 tribes have not received the benefits guaranteed by the Constitution and there has been no improvement in the quality of their life, the government is planning to include a number of sub-castes into the list of tribes.
“The government should publish a white paper on the status of different tribes and also on the status of the communities it plans to include in the ST list,” president of the Adivasi Reservation Samrakshana Samiti R.S. Dora told The Hindu .
The government, for its electoral compulsions, was actively considering including numerically larger communities like the Gangaputra (fishermen) community in the ST list, he said.
The Telangana Government had set up a commission to go into the merits of including a couple of communities in the ST list and they even toured villages in the Visakhapatnam Agency area, Mr. Dora said. The State Government should take discuss the issue in the Assembly before taking any decision, he added. “The TDP Government has been consistently ignoring the interests of the tribal people. It has neither constituted the statutory Tribal Advisory Council nor appointed a tribal as Minister for Tribal Welfare,” Mr. Dora said.
“It is unfortunate that the government is viewing tribal issues from a political standpoint as YSR Congress candidates won the ST seats,” he rued.
