SHILLONG, Aug 30: Meghalaya Social Welfare Minister, Paul Lyngdoh today assured the assembly session that the government will constitute a committee to study the proposal for amending the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 and come up with a report within three months’ time.
“The department will constitute a Departmental Committee to study the matter in depth and come up with a final report in 3 months’ time,” Lyngdoh said while replying to a resolution moved by opposition VPP legislator Adelbert Nongrum in the Assembly.
The resolution seeks to impress upon the Union government on the crucial need to further amend the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 to make necessary exclusions and substitutions to the list of tribes in Part XI of the schedule pertaining to the state of Meghalaya, in keeping with the actual demographic of the state.
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“We will engage with the stakeholders and obtain their views before finalising the report. And thereafter it will be forwarded to the Registrar General of India, and we will duly follow up the matter as per prescribed procedure,” Lyngdoh assured.
Part XI of the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order, 1950 (Part III – Rules and Orders under the Constitution) is the list of notified Scheduled Tribes in Meghalaya which currently has 17 notified tribes as Scheduled Tribes.
Lyngdoh said that in June 1999, the government approved modalities for deciding claims for inclusion in or exclusion from the lists of Scheduled Tribes. According to these approved guidelines, only those claims that have been agreed to by the concerned state government, the Registrar General of India and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes will be taken up for consideration.
Wherever representations are received in the Ministry of Tribal for inclusion of any community in the list of Scheduled Tribes of a State/UT, the Ministry forwards that representation to the concerned State Government/UT administration for recommendation as required under Article 342 of the Constitution. If the concerned state government recommends the proposal, then the same is sent to the Registrar General of India (RGI), he said.
The RGI, if satisfied with the recommendation of the State government, recommends the proposal to the central government. Thereafter, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs referred the proposal to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for their recommendation, he added. (NNN)
