India 2018

Welfare 549
collection of revenue and taxes and other powers for the regulation and
management of natural resources.
Procedure for Declaration as ST
The term scheduled tribes is defined in the Constitution of India under Article
366(25) as such tribes or tribal communities or parts of groups within such tribes
or tribal communities as are deemed under Article 342 to be scheduled tribes
for the purposes of this Constitution. Article 342 prescribes the procedure to be
followed in the matter of specification of scheduled tribes. In terms of Article
342(1), the President may, with respect to any state or union territory, and where
it is a state, after consultation with the Governor thereof, notify tribes or tribal
communities or parts thereof as scheduled tribes. This confers on the tribe or
part of it a constitutional status invoking the safeguards provided for in the
Constitution, to these communities, in their respective states/UTs. Thus, in terms
of Article 342(1), only those communities who have been declared as such by
the President through an initial public notification will be considered as
scheduled tribes. Any further amendment in the list is to be done through an
Act of Parliament (Article 342(2)). Parliament may, by law, include in or exclude
from the list of scheduled tribes, any tribe or tribal community or parts thereof.
The list of scheduled tribes is state-specific. In other words, a community
declared as scheduled tribe in one state need not be so in another.
Scheduling and De-Scheduling of Tribes
Thus, the first specification of scheduled tribes in relation to a particular state/
union territory is by a notified order of the President, after consultation with
the state governments concerned. The criteria generally adopted for specification
of a community as a scheduled tribe are : (a) indications of primitive traits;
(b)distinctive culture; (c) shyness of contact with the community at large; and
(d) geographical isolation i.e. backwardness.These are not spelt out in the
Constitution but have become well established. They take into account the
definitions in the 1931 Census, the reports of the first Backward Classes
Commission (Kalelkar Committee), 1955, the Advisory Committee on Revision
of SC/ ST lists (Lokur Committee), 1965 and the Joint Committee of Parliament
on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Orders (Amendment) Bill, 1967
(Chanda Committee), 1969. There are over 700 tribes (with many of them
overlapping in more than one State) as notified under Article 342 of the
Constitution of India, spread over different states and Union Territories of the
country. It is worth noting that no community has been specified as a scheduled
tribe in relation to the states of Haryana and Punjab and the Union Territories
of Chandigarh, Delhi and Puducherry.
Ascertaining ST Status
Where a person claims to belong to a scheduled tribe by birth, it should be
verified: (a) that the person and his parents actually belong to the community