PANJIM: Tribal Affairs Minister Govind Gaude on Sunday stated that tribal community may get election reservation in the 2022 elections.
“This is a long pending issue and was pertaining to the Central government. While the tribals had got Scheduled Tribes (ST) status in 2003, now in 2011 census it is already notified that Gawada, Kunbi and Velip have got the ST status. The delimitation committee sits once in 25 years but now it’s been 45 years already that this committee has not met,” Gaude said.
He said, “The state government has already represented the issue to the Union government and I personally met the Election Commission, the president and the prime minister too. But the issue has to be taken up in both the Houses of the Parliament otherwise we should knock the door of the Supreme Court but it’s difficult to approach the court on this issue. We hope by 2022 the tribal’s may get political reservation in the assembly.”
He further said that tribals have struggles a lot in the state of Goa especially for their constitutional rights and the benefits but till today they have been deprived from entering the politics.
Speaking on PoS machines, the minister said that civil supplies department is looking into the matter of providing offline PoS at societies which do not have proper network.
However, fair price shop owners in the State have objected to installation of biometric system based point of sales machines claiming this would be unviable.
Herald had reported on Thursday how ration card holders will have to produce their thumb impression to claim their quota.
