The ST organisations in Goa have not welcomed the decision of the Union Cabinet giving the nod to Readjustment of Representation of Scheduled Tribes Bill, 2024. In fact they have claimed that this decision actually sets them back and undo their years of work. The Bill is slated to be tabled in Parliamentary session after the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, then it would be passed in both the Houses which would make it a law and only then the Election Commission will appoint Delimitation Commission in accordance with the law to readjust four constituencies for Scheduled Tribes (ST). The Chief Minister himself stated that this whole procedure will be completed by the year 2027 when the next Assembly elections are due. However, ST organisations have refused to believe the claims made by the CM and have accused the government of only showing them the carrot of reservation by restarting the whole process ahead of elections instead of their demand of ordinance for reservation.
The ST leaders have declared that they will soon clarify their political stance. So, although the CM has succeeded in getting the nod from the Union Cabinet for the proposal, it has barely solved the issue. In fact, it has probably become even more complex. Now the question is whether this complication will trouble the ruling BJP ahead of the general elections. The leaders of organisations, be it GAKUVED or Mission for Political Reservation, have often claimed that there are around 1.70 lakh ST voters in the State. One of the possibilities of this threat is that if the ordinance is not issued before the declaration of code of conduct, these votes will go against BJP. This means that votes will split and are likely go in the accounts of either the Congress or AAP. In short, these votes will be in favour of the INDIA bloc’s candidate. It is another matter whether all these votes will be united as a community, but the CM while talking about the Centre’s decision accused the Congress of depriving ST community from various facilities. Although he also criticised ST leaders of politicising protests, Congress remained his main target during the press conference.
As expected, Congress too has responded to the CM’s allegations and read out the list of things they have supposedly done for the ST community. The opposition party also tried to capitalise on the opportunity and explained how the government has failed to resolve crucial issues such as mining, Mhadei’s diversion and water shortage in the State. One cannot also ignore the fact that Congress’ Ramakant Khalap, who is considered to be the potential candidate to contest from North Goa, was present during the press conference held by his party. In a nutshell, BJP and Congress both tried to promote their manifestos under the pretext of discussing ST reservations.
Now, the main question is whether all 1.70 lakh voters will come together as claimed by ST leaders? Moreover, it depends on how aware the community is regarding the importance of reservations and their issues. Besides, not all the community members share the same political ideology and so, they will require a candidate from the community for all the voters to come together. If an ST leader contests the Lok Sabha elections as an independent candidate then it will give a fair idea on what is the sample size of the community’s voters. However, the general polls are merely a month away and the leaders will have to work tirelessly to bind the entire community under one aim. For that to happen, the leaders will have to first agree upon a common agenda because the community does not consist of just one caste or religion.
In accordance with the community’s population in the State, they are supposed to get 10% of the total number of constituencies, which is four. If one had to think about the tribal-majority constituencies then those would be Sanguem, Quepem, Nuvem and Priol. Since the candidates in the fray will have to be only and only from tribal communities, the reservation could affect some established political leaders or weaken their position in the future. There is no denying that the ruling party must have thought about these two factors as well and hence the time-consuming procedure for the bill to become the actual law favours the ruling party. Although the ST leaders have said that they will not be fooled this time like they were in 2014, 2017 and 2022, the definite roadmap and direction for them to find a political answer to this will be crucial. For now, the leaders are trying to gauge the pulse of the community members and only time will tell how the ST community responds to them.
