SC plea over House seats for Limbus & Tamangs

RAJEEV RAVIDAS, TT, 14 February 2019,  Gangtok: The Sikkim Limboo Tamang Tribal Joint Action Committee has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court seeking reservation of five seats in the Sikkim Assembly for the two communities who were granted Scheduled tribe status in 2003, but are yet to get their quota as mandated by the Constitution.

Adeep Tamang, the JAC spokesman, said the committee was left with no choice other than to take legal recourse since they were continuing to be denied justice ever after more than 15 years of their being granted the tribal status.

"We had filed the petition in the Supreme Court on January 15, and on February 11, the court accepted our petition and has sent notices to various parties named in the petition," he said.

Simultaneously, the committee has also written to the president of India, the prime minister and the state governor on the issue. "Since the elections are only a few months away, and reserving seats for us through constitutional amendment is unlikely to happen in such a short time, we have demanded that seats be reserved for us through a presidential ordinance," said Tamang.

This is not the first time that the apex court has been approached on the issue.

In 2006, Hari Ram Pradhan, the former president of the BJP's Sikkim unit, had also filed a petition in the court. After a 10-year long legal battle, the Supreme Court in its ruling in January 2016 had directed the Union home ministry to find a permanent solution to the problem within four months.

However, even after more than three years of the verdict, the quota continues to remain elusive to the tribal communities, who constitute anywhere between 15 to 20 per cent of the state's population of about 6.50 lakh people.

Article 332 of the constitution provides for reservation of seats in the state Assemblies for the SCs and STs "(in) the same proportion to the total number of seats in the Assembly as the population of the Scheduled Castes in the State or of the Scheduled Tribes in the State or part of the State, as the case may be, in respect of which seats are so reserved bears to the total population of the State".

All political parties in the state, including the ruling Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), support the demand of the Limbus and Tamangs.

The state government has also suggested to the Centre to increase the number of Assembly seats from the present 32 to 40 and reserve five seats from the increased number for the two communities.

"We don't care from where and how you give us, but five seats must be reserved for us on the basis of our population," the JAC spokesman asserted