Editorial: Address ST Seats Issue in Earnest

Sikkim never felt the need for Assembly seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes until the year 2003. The only communities [until 2003] from Sikkim in the Scheduled Tribes list – the Bhutias and Lepchas – already enjoyed community-specific seat reservation. That year, however, two more communities – the Limboos and Tamangs - were included in the ST list and with the inclusion, earned a right mandated by the Constitution of India to seats reserved for them as Scheduled Tribes. Their inclusion in the ST list never threatened the BL seats because the latter are part of a unique-to-Sikkim community-specific reservation. All fears of any erosion of BL seats to meet the requirements of new Scheduled Tribes are unfounded for two reasons – one, the BL seats are also a Constitutional commitment [like ST seats for the Limboos and Tamangs], and two, touching the BL seats is a political tinderbox which no party or government will risk. As things stands, 15 of 32 Assembly seats are already reserved [12 BL seats, One for Sangha and two for Scheduled Castes]. Reserving even two more seats [and a proportional representation for Limboos and Tamangs through ST seats would require more than that] will result in a combined population of barely [on a very rough estimate] 40% securing representative berths [as MLAs] in excess of 50% which would not be fair on the remaining majority which be squeezed into minority representation. A proportional representation for Limboos and Tamangs through ST seats will skew the representation format by much more. As a result, Sikkim is confronted with a mathematical quandary which offers no easy solutions; and this is borne out by the fact that nine years since the two communities became ‘tribal’, Assembly seat reservation for them remains awaited. With an Assembly election little over a year away, the issue is bound to heat up again. The process has already begun, and now it is time to get earnest about it, not just confrontational.
At the cost of repetition, let’s go over the facts on the listing of the two communities as Scheduled Tribes again – they automatically start enjoying all the benefits earmarked for STs in India. Since the reservation of seats is guaranteed for them by the Constitution, they will get that too in proportion to their population ratio. It is here that granting the demand becomes tricky in Sikkim. In other states, Limbus and Tamangs, along with other communities included in the ST list recently, can automatically contest from seats already reserved for STs there. Although the number of seats reserved for STs elsewhere also needs to be reworked since the population composition of STs changes with the new inclusions, there is no rush for the same since some seats are already reserved for STs and open to the two communities as well. There is, however, no such reservation in Sikkim where seats are reserved for Bhutias and Lepchas and not for STs. Here, fresh seats need to be carved out for STs. The first requirement for this will obviously be the latest census figures on the population composition of STs in Sikkim. It gets further complicated when one bears in mind that even BLs will be included in this figure since they too are STs. Then, the decision-making bodies will need the constituency-wise breakup of ST population in Sikkim to earmark the constituencies to be reserved. This again cannot be tabulated with LTs in isolation and will probably have to include the BLs as well. That is another tricky situation. It is only after this and several other administrative nitty-gritty’s are ironed out that a proposal can be drafted on how many seats should be reserved for the STs [let’s not forget that the new reservation will not be on the basis of community, but for STs] and where. And we are still talking only about the administrative requirements. Eventually, the Representation of Peoples Act will have to be amended to record and authorise reservation for Scheduled Tribes in Sikkim which will cover the constitutional safeguard of political rights of the Limboos and Tamangs in their present avatar as Scheduled Tribes. These are but processes, and offer nothing to resolve the mathematical challenge of reserving seats without disadvantaging any other community or population group.
Needless to add, the various aspects at play here and the legacy of existing reservations makes the issue of reserving seats for LTs very complicated. It is not something that can be decided and cleared in a hurry. It is in the interest of every community involved that the ground realities are first identified, the problem points reasoned out and a consensus arrived on the structure of reservations. It is all very easy to say that Limboos and Tamangs deserve a particular number of seats and that the same should be reserved immediately for them without undermining anyone else, but it’s not as simple a task when one tries to work around the existing reservation system and find a solution acceptable to all sections of the Sikkimese society. It also goes without saying that these seats, since they are guaranteed by the Constitution, cannot be denied to the two communities and will eventually come their way. All that is required is some patience and some clear thinking so that no community, including the Limboos and Tamangs, ends up feeling short-changed. At present, the only proposal on how this can be achieved has been presented by the State Government with the option of increasing the number of Assembly seats to 40. As for the rest, all one hears from them is what cannot be done, but no one has so far offered a formula on what could be done…