STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: Assam's Education and Tribal Affairs Minister Ranoj Pegu on Monday said that the tribal people of the State are not landless, but many of them do not have land documents. Mission Basundhara 2.0 has been launched to enable the State Government to provide with the necessary land-ownership documents, he said.
Attending a seminar on Mission Basundhara 2.0 organized here by the All Assam Tribal Sangha (AATS), Pegu said that tribal people of the State have resorted to agitational programmes over the decades over three issues.
The first issue is creation of separate states or autonomous councils, under which the Bodos, Karbis and Dimas obtained their respective autonomous council under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution while others obtained simple autonomous councils or development councils in a phased manner. The remaining tribal communities will also receive their due rights in due course, the Tribal Affairs Minister said.
Terming recognition of tribal languages as the second issue, Pegu said that the Bodo language has been already included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Other tribal languages are being used as medium of academic instruction or being taught as languages at various levels of education. The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) has advocated teaching of tribal languages right from the pre-primary level, he pointed out, adding that thus tribal languages are getting official recognition.
Pegu flagged land rights as the third important issue of the tribal people. He opined that the land rights of the tribal people have not been secured so far. Tribal belts and tribal blocks were created to protect the land belonging to indigenous tribal people from being taken over by non-tribal immigrants, he said, but lack of proper surveys and failure to grant land pattas to tribal inhabitants of tribal belts and blocks resulted in such land officially remaining as non-cadastral villages.
Pegu said that surveys were done of many non-cadastral villages during Mission Basundhara 1.0 and the remaining villages will be surveyed during Mission Basundhara 2.0. He said that Mission Basundhara 2.0 has a'Sunset Provision' under which tribal people will be able to get land rights up to 50 bighas of document-less land which they have been in possession of through inheritance.
He, however, cautioned that the 'Sunset provision' is the last chance to legitimize land rights and the opportunity will not be given in Mission 3.0 and urged the tribal people to avail of this opportunity.
The seminar was attended by retired IAS officer Nazrul Islam as the resource person, along with AATS president Sukumar Basumatary, general secretary Aditya Khakhlari and office-bearers of various tribal organizations.
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