Rajya Sabha Passes Bill To Move Gond Community To ST List In Uttar Pradesh

The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday moved to grant Scheduled Tribe status to the Gond tribe in four districts of Uttar Pradesh.

The Constitution (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) Orders (Second Amendment) Bill, 2022 seeks to amend the SC order to exclude the Gond community as a Scheduled Caste in four districts of UP, namely Chandauli, Kushinagar, Sant Kabir Nagar and Sant Ravidas Nagar.

It amends the ST Order to recognise Gonds as a Scheduled Tribe in these districts.

The demand for inclusion of the Gond community in the ST list was first raised in 1980s, said the Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda on the floor of the House.

While previous governments had consistently ignored the welfare of the tribals, the new India is connecting them with basic facilities, he added further.

The Union Cabinet had previously approved a proposal to bring the Gond community residing in 13 districts of UP from SC list into the ST list in September. It included five subcategories of the Gond community, namely the Dhuria, Nayak, Ojha, Pathari and Rajgond.

The Minister added that the government is set to bring bills to grant ST status to communities from Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Chattisgarh, which were included in the above Cabinet decision.

The government had also considered changing the five criteria for identifying tribal communities as per the Lokur Committee, but has shelved the idea for now.

The criteria were considered restricting in assigning ST status to communities that deserve it, as per a 2014 Task Force.

The tribal vote has become a focal point of BJP's election strategies. It played a pivotal role in recently concluded Gujarat elections, where BJP won 24 out of 40 SC/ST seats.