PANAJI:
The Centre, State government and Scheduled Tribe (ST) community have decided to file separate special leave petitions (SLPs) in the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court’s interim order staying the process of notifying Goa’s ST population figures, a crucial step towards granting political reservation to the community in the Goa Legislative Assembly.
A delegation led by Tribal Welfare Minister Ramesh Tawadkar, Goa BJP Vice-President Narendra Sawaikar, Advocate General Devidas Pangam, Additional Solicitor General of India Pravin Faldessai and other ST leaders met the Solicitor General of India in Delhi on Monday evening to discuss the next course of action.
Speaking after the meeting, Sawaikar said the Solicitor General had advised the filing of separate SLPs by the Centre, the State government and the ST community.
“The work has started and it should be filed soon,” Sawaikar said, without divulging further details.
The decision comes in the wake of the High Court of Bombay at Goa restraining the Census Commissioner from notifying or publishing Goa’s ST population figures, holding that such figures cannot be determined on any basis other than the first official Census conducted after 2026.
A Division Bench of Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit S Jamsandekar passed the interim order last week, observing that no population figures, whether ascertained or estimated, could be notified on any basis other than the first official Census conducted after 2026. The Census exercise is scheduled to commence on December 1, 2026, and conclude on January 4, 2027.
The order has raised concerns among ST leaders, who have been demanding political reservation in the Goa Assembly for more than two decades.
In its order, the High Court referred to a September 10 communication from the Census Commissioner to the Union Ministry of Law and Justice. It noted that three communities were included in the ST list on January 8, 2003, after the 2001 Census had recorded only 566 ST individuals in Goa.
The court also observed that notifying population figures under Section 3 of the 2025 Act could render them final and non-justiciable, potentially frustrating the petition before its final adjudication.
