Issues facing Sikkim need a solution - Limboo and Tamang communities and others

 Limboo and Tamang communities, scheduled tribe status for 12 left-out communities and visit of the17th Karmapa to Sikkim.

Editorial, EOI, 19 November 2023 : A number of vital issues facing Sikkim are not making much headway in Delhi for years. This calls into question the commitment of the Centre to this strategically important Himalayan state that opted to join with the Indian Union in 1975. 

Among these issues are the reserved seats in the Sikkim assembly for the Limboo and Tamang communities, scheduled tribe status for 12 left-out communities and also the long-awaited visit of the17th Karmapa to Sikkim. 

The issue of reserved seats for the Limboo and Tamang communities is hanging fire since 2003, when people of these two communities living in Sikkim were declared as scheduled tribes by the Centre. 

It is their constitutional right to get reserved seats in the assembly. Neither the previous Sikkim Democratic Front government nor the present Sikkim Krantikari Morcha government can be faulted for having ignored the issue. 

One still remembers previous Chief Minister Pawan Chamling pleading with the issue before Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a public meeting when the latter came to Sikkim to inaugurate the Pakyong airport in 2018. Sikkim Krantikari Morcha M.P. Indra Hang Subba raised the issue in Lok Sabha in December 2022. 

With the Sikkim assembly having only 32 seats and with other constitutional and pre- merger protections like the special status of the Bhutia – Lepcha communities also to be taken into consideration, it is for the Centre to find a way out and accommodate the Limboo-Tamang communities too with reserved seats in the assembly. 

The issue of declaring 12 left-out communities in Sikkim as scheduled tribes has important bearings for the adjoining hills of Darjeeling and Kalimpong in West Bengal as well. 

The Registrar General of India had earlier opined against the step in the context of the Darjeeling hills, but Sikkim has a different claim that during the rule of the Chogyal most of these communities used to be treated as tribes. 

If the left-out communities in Sikkim are declared as scheduled tribes, it will also be difficult to for Delhi to deny the left-out communities in the adjoining hills of West Bengal their claim. But, the Centre has also promised to the people of Darjeeling a permanent political solution and this may be one option. 

Whether the 17th Karmapa who is now understood to be in the U.S. will agree to visit Sikkim is of course not in the hands of Delhi entirely. But, the visit is important, not only for large sections of the people of Sikkim who, being devout Buddhists, hold the Karmapa in high esteem, but also for the Centre. 

With the 14th Dalai Lama advancing in age, Delhi can ignore at its own peril the issue of spiritual and political leadership of the Tibetan exiles settled in India. There is a view that the Karmapa is refraining from visiting India because he does not have the same liberty of movement within the country which Delhi has very rightly accorded to the Dalai Lama. 

Overall, Sikkim being a state strategically located on the China border and the last state to have joined the Indian Union through an instrument of merger, it is important in the larger interests of the country that vital issues