Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment of India Ramdas Athawale has stirred a hornet's nest by saying that reservation is not possible for the Scheduled Tribe Community in the Goa legislative assembly "due to the limited size of their population in the state as per census figures." This statement is a rude shock to the ST community leaders who have been moving from pillar to post and even camping in Delhi, hoping that political bosses will hear their pleas.
Athawale, however, apologised later and said that his statement came out of a lack of information on Goa's ST population and blamed his party workers and the media for not correcting him. He assured to work towards bringing in reservations for the Goa assembly.
Athawale's comments were in absolute contradiction of what the State government has been saying. Not too long ago, Chief Minster Pramod Sawant, while reassuring the ST communities of their reservation demand, had vowed that the process would be completed ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections. The community leaders were pressing for enforcing it for the ensuing 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Earlier, Sawant told the Legislative Assembly that a proposal would be sent to reserve Mayem along with three other constituencies for STs.
Athawale's comment comes a day after Mission Political Reservations for Scheduled Tribes, a group that has reignited the quota debate and kept it raging, kicked off an awareness campaign from Sawant's constituency of Sanquelim. Firstly, it is premature to rule out quotas if reservations are to be decided on the latest census that would be taken up after 2026 as per the latest communication from the legislative department of the Union Minister of Law and Justice to the State government. Moreover, if we may recall, in a letter sent to the Union Ministry of Law and Justice earlier, the State tribal welfare department had stated that four constituencies need to be reserved for ST communities out of the 40 as per the 2011 census data. The letter cited the ST population to be 10.23 per cent in Goa.
When Mission Political Reservations for Scheduled Tribes took up the matter with Union Minister for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal in July this year, they were assured that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be apprised of the issue and justice would be given to the community.
Athawale is known to be an astute political leader, having contributed significantly to social welfare besides being a staunch proponent of quotas for SCs and STs in various spheres, including politics and defence forces. It is hard to believe that a leader of such stature can make an off-the-cuff comment on such a sensitive matter.
The State government's silence in Athawale's flip-flop says a lot and only fuels the belief that the Central leader was prompted to eat his words as a rear-guard damage-control. The U-turn, appears to be a belated move to salvage the position of the State leadership and only strengthens the community's view that the political leadership is toying with their sentiments.
It's time the ST leaders of the State who have been hiding under a rock and have preferred to remain put due to political affiliations to come out and seek answers from the political leadership. The issue cannot be pushed from one extreme to another end of uncertainty.
