PANAJI
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Wednesday said that the State government was regularly pursuing the issue of political reservations for the Scheduled Tribe community with the Central government and the Election Commission of India.
Sawant, who was apparently referring to reservations in the Goa legislative assembly, said that the issue of political reservations is being followed up with the Home Ministry and the ECI.
He was addressing a gathering at the Institute Menezes Braganza hall in the capital city mostly comprising of members of ST communities at the 'Prerna Din' held to pay homage to the two tribal activists -- Manguesh Gaonkar and Deelip Velip -- who died in the violent tribal agitation in 2011.
Reservations for STs in State legislatures is a Constitutional guarantee but there are no reservations at elections in Goa, a demand the community organisation UTTA has been pursuing for several years, including knocking the doors of the Bombay High Court at Goa.
The community claims, as per last Census figures, the community has a strength of approximately 12 per-cent of the State's population and as many as eight assembly seats should be reserved.
Meanwhile, speaking further, Sawant said that his government will ensure that all the facilities which the statutes mandate are being adhered to in toto.
He also said, that nearly 10,000 claims of members of tribal communities are pending, including forest rights and other land rights which his government will work to settle expeditiously.
"Around 135 claims related to forest rights have been settled and the sanads too have already been handed over to them," Sawant said, adding that over the next one year, his government will work towards handing over sanads to at least another 1,500 members of the community.
The chief minister said, the process of assessing forest rights claims will be expedited and that he is hopeful that all the 10,000-odd pending claims will be resolved in the next 3-4 years.
Another Constitutional requirement is the mandate to divert 12% budgetary allocations for tribal welfare and preparation of a Tribal Sub-plan, which Sawant said, the Finance department has been instructed to follow.
The Finance department has started working on this, Sawant said, adding that a Tribal Museum at Farmagudi has already been allocated Rs 60 crore by the Centre.
The Centre has also allocated funds to the tune of Rs 10 crore for setting up a Tribal Research Centre at Sanguem and the issues related to the setting up of the Tribal Bhavan are on the way to resolution, he added.
