Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal People Opposes ST Status to Six Communities

Our Correspondent

Kokrajhar: The Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal People’s North East Zone (ICITP-NEZ) has strongly denounced the Sarbananda Sonowal-led Assam Government’s hasty decision to grant Scheduled Tribes status to six communities, including the most privileged and advanced community ‘Ahom’.

In a press statement, the president of the ICITP- NEZ, Jebraram Mashahary and secretary Sonmani Kemprai said that despite being rejected several times repeatedly by the Registrar General of India (RGI), the present BJP government was playing a pre-planned dirty game to grant ST status by hook and by crook violating all existing norms of identification of the genuine beneficiaries of ST status through established institutions like ST Commission and RGI only to woo vote banks from these six communities at the cost of the original Scheduled Tribe list of Assam. The BJP government in Assam is all bent to exterminate the tribal communities of Assam for their mere vested political equation, they said.

Considering the immense threat to the survival of the indigenous tribal people of Assam, the Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal People appealed to all the indigenous and tribal people of the Northeast to collectively and democratically fight against this historical injustice at all levels, including legal fight to foil the hasty design of destroying the existing tribal communities of Assam.

Also Read: Assam News