Schedule Tribe Demand and Proactive Support of CM Prem Singh Tamang-Golay
The Schedule Tribe demand of twelve left out communities of Sikkim is a long pending issue. The demand of a community for a tribal status is a right of the community under constitution of India with special reference to article 342. The concerned ministries and authorities are Ministry of Tribal Affairs, National Commission for Schedule Tribe (NCST), Registrar General of India & Census Commissioner (RGI), Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi.
In context of Sikkim, Government of India has sent many letters to the state for the documents of the twelve left out communities in the past. The documents mainly required the proper technical write ups of each community with authentic source, which can justify the various official criteria.
Due to the lack of proper information in the documents submitted to the Government of India, the case was pending with regard to Sikkim. There are more than 40 communities whose such cases are pending in the country.
However, I believe Sikkim is the only lucky state where the Chief Minister himself is very much supportive and serious in this issue, politically and technically. He is not only providing political support but also providing technical support for preparing of the write ups/ethnography for the each 12 left out communities of Sikkim.
The Sikkim State High Level Committee (SSHLC) was constituted to prepare the most authentic community ethnography write ups, which could be able to fulfill the official criteria laid by Government of India. The committee consists of top level anthropologist, economist, academicians, policy makers and research analyst from entire nation.
The second meeting of SSHLC was held at Delhi on 10th Febraury, 2025 at New Delhi, for which I had attended the meeting on behalf of Gurung Community of Sikkim. I would like to thank CM Prem Singh Tamang Golay for his effort to gather all these resource persons despite of their busy schedule in this short time and taking us all the nodal representative/technical persons of the twelve left out communities of Sikkim to the New Delhi is extremely commendable. The meeting was meant to discuss on the progress on technical reports on each left out communities of Sikkim and its way forward.
On behalf of Gurung community of Sikkim and being a nodal representative for Ethnography report, I could witness CM’s seriousness, sincerity, dedication and support for each community during the meeting. Since morning till evening during presentation by the SSHLC HCM stood for each community to avoid any lacunae in the technical write-ups. I think we younger generation and the nodal representative of each community should never forget his support and one must learn and inspire by the vision of living in harmony and unity in diversity of CM of Sikkim, P.S Tamang-Golay. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, I think it is our responsibility who knows the hard work and support of the CM for making good technical write ups of each 12 communities before submitting to Government of India for the demand of Schedule Tribe and make our community people to understand the truth.
We, Gurung community of Sikkim is eternally grateful.
– Rajdeep Gurung
Chairman, Gurung Ethnography Drafting Committee
All Sikkim Gurung (Tamu) Buddhist Association (ASGTBA)-Gurung Association of Sikkim (GurAS)
