The State of India’s Scheduled Areas

What’s in today’s article?

• Why in news?
• News Summary: The State of India’s Scheduled Areas
• Constitutional provision regarding administration of Scheduled Areas
• A place for ST communities
• Scheduled Area governance
• Who decides a Scheduled Area?
• The identity of a Scheduled Area
• Various recommendations on identity of a Schedule Area
• Way forward

Why in news?

• India’s 705 Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities – making up 8.6% of the country’s population – live in 26 States and six Union Territories.
• This article analyses the state of India’s Scheduled Areas.

News Summary: The State of India’s Scheduled Areas

Constitutional provision regarding administration of Scheduled Areas

• Article 244, pertaining to the administration of Scheduled and Tribal Areas, is the single most important constitutional provision for STs. 
• Articles 244(1) provides for the application of Fifth Schedule provisions to Scheduled Areas notified in any State other than Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram. 
• The Sixth Schedule applies to these states as per Article 244(2).

A Place for ST Communities

• Scheduled Areas cover 11.3% of India’s land area, and have been notified in 10 States: 
  • Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Himachal Pradesh.
• STs left out
• As per various Adivasi organisations, villages have been left out in the 10 States with Scheduled Areas and in other States with ST population. 
• As a result, 59% of India’s STs remain outside the purview of Article 244. 
• They are denied rights under the laws applicable to Scheduled Areas, including the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 and the Biological Diversity Act 2002.
• In 1995, the Bhuria Committee, constituted to recommend provisions for the extension of panchayat raj to Scheduled Areas, recommended including these villages, but this is yet to be done. 
• The absence of viable ST-majority administrative units has been the standard bureaucratic response.
  • This argument has been used to demand the denotification of parts of Scheduled Areas where STs are now a minority due to the influx of non-tribal individuals.

Scheduled Area governance

• Tribal Advisory Council
• The President of India notifies India’s Scheduled Areas. States with Scheduled Areas need to constitute a Tribal Advisory Council with up to 20 ST members. 
• They will advise the Governor on matters referred to them regarding ST welfare. 
• The Governor will then submit a report every year to the President regarding the administration of Scheduled Areas.
• Role of Governor
• The Governor can repeal or amend any law enacted by Parliament and the State Legislative Assembly in its application to the Scheduled Area of that State. 
• The Governor can also make regulations for a Scheduled Area, especially to prohibit or restrict the transfer of tribal land by or among members of the STs, and regulate the allotment of land to STs and money-lending to STs.
• Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, or PESA 1996
• PESA empowered the gram sabhas to exercise substantial authority through direct democracy.
• It stated that structures at the higher level do not assume the powers and authority of the gram sabha.
• The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act – a.k.a. FRA – 2006
• Here, too, the gram sabhas are the statutory authority to govern the forests under their jurisdiction.

Who decides a Scheduled Area?

• The Fifth Schedule confers powers exclusively on the President to declare any area to be a Scheduled Area.
• In 2006, the Supreme Court held that the identification of Scheduled Areas is an executive function.

The identity of a Scheduled Area

• Neither the Constitution nor any law provides any criteria to identify Scheduled Areas. 
• But based on the 1961 Dhebar Commission Report, the guiding norms for their declaration are: 
  • preponderance of tribal population, 
  • compactness and reasonable size of the area, 
  • a viable administrative entity such as a district, block or taluk, and 
  • economic backwardness of the area relative to neighbouring areas.
• No law prescribes the minimum percentage of STs in such an area nor a cut-off date for its identification.

Various recommendations on the identity of a Schedule Area

• 2002 Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes Commission
  • It had recommended that all revenue villages with 40% and more tribal population according to the 1951 census may be considered as Scheduled Area on merit.
• Bhuria Committee
  • The Bhuria Committee recognised a face-to-face community, a hamlet or a group of hamlets managing its own affairs to be the basic unit of self-governance in Scheduled Areas.
  • But it also noted that the most resource-rich tribal-inhabited areas have been divided up by administrative boundaries, pushing them to the margins.
• Enactment of PESA settles this debate
• PESA’s enactment finally settled this ambiguity in law. It defined the village and empowered gram sabhas.
• However, gram sabhas are yet to demarcate their traditional or customary boundaries on revenue lands in the absence of a suitable law.

Way forward

• Any living areas or groups of living areas in states and union territories where Scheduled Tribes (STs) are the largest community should be declared as Scheduled Areas, even if they are not connected. 
• These areas should also include forest lands where the Forest Rights Act of 2006 applies, and the boundaries within regular lands as defined by the state laws.
• Additionally, the boundaries of villages, local governing bodies (panchayats), regions (talukas), and districts should be adjusted to make sure that these areas are fully recognized as Scheduled Areas.

Q1) What is FRA 2006?

The Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 recognizes the rights of traditional forest dwellers to forest resources. The act was passed in 2006 to address the historical injustice done to traditional forest dwellers in India. It was intended to protect the right to life and livelihood of scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers.

Q2) What is PESA?

PESA stands for the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act. It's a law that was enacted in 1996 by the Government of India. The act extends the provisions of Panchayats to the Fifth Schedule Areas, which are areas with a preponderance of tribal population. The act ensures self-governance through traditional Gram Sabhas for people living in the Scheduled Areas of India.

Source: What do the home lands of India’s ST communities look like?