Congress organises function to commemorate 70 years of repeal of Criminal Tribes Act

PTI, Sep 1, 2022, 10:02 AM IST

The Congress organised a function here on Wednesday to observe ”Mukti Diwas”, marking the 70th anniversary of the repeal of the Criminal Tribes Act and de-notifying the DNTs as ”Criminal Tribes”.

The Scheduled Caste (SC) department of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) released a ”white paper” raising demands of the De-Notified Tribes and said the Centre must initiate steps to enumerate the DNTs in the decadal census.

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment should earmark an annual outlay for the welfare of the DNTs. The states, Union territories and central ministries should formulate and implement a DNT sub-plan and the DNTs should be given a 10-per cent reservation in government jobs and education, even if it exceeds the 50-per cent limit. If a 10-per cent reservation can be provided to the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category, then the DNTs should also be provided the same, it demanded.

Balkrishna Sidram Renke, former chairman, National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes (NCDNT), and Padmashri Professor Ganesh Devy, a thinker and cultural activist, attended the programme as the chief guest and the guest of honour respectively.

Congress leaders Mukul Wasnik and K Raju, national coordinator, AICC (SC, ST, OBC and Minority departments), also attended the programme.

Renke said the DNT communities continue to face institutional and structural prejudice, and are automatically stigmatised as criminals by virtue of their birth.

On top of this prejudice and stigma, police brutality and false criminal cases are an everyday reality for the DNTs and owing to this, they are a long way off from attaining true freedom, he said.

This stigma, prejudice and brutality last throughout their lifetime and end only with their death, the leaders said.

Congress’s SC department chairman Rajesh Lilothia said the party has been undertaking sincere efforts to uplift the DNTs. Concerning this, the NCDNT was reconstituted in 2005 under the chairmanship of Renke, who submitted his report with crucial recommendations in 2008.

Post this, during the second term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, a committee was constituted by the NCDNT, which was later known as the Idate Commission, for three years from the date of the notification.

After coming to power in 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (NJP) placed senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) member Bhiku Ramji Idate as its chairman to address the plight of the DNTs, but the latter ended up diluting the existing recommendations of the Renke Commission, Lilothia said, adding that the panel could not make much progress and failed to come up with concrete lists of the communities and targeted tangible and achievable goals through recommendations.

”The BJP’s Idate Commission undertook no actual work on the ground for the De-Notified Tribes in India. For this colossal failure and wasting of state resources, the Idate Commission and the Narendra Modi government are to be held accountable.

”We condemn their lack of interest in the development of the De-Notified Tribes and failure to develop what they set out to deliver through the commission formed for the welfare of the De-Notified Tribes in India by the Congress as a follow-up to the Renke Commission,” he said.

Raju demanded measures such as enumeration of the DNTs in the upcoming census, earmarking of an annual outlay for the welfare of the DNTs, targeted interventions for building residential schools for children belonging to the DNT communities and a 10-per cent reservation in government jobs and education for the DNTs from the Modi government.