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Friday, February 18, 2011

BJP wants State Govt to explain delay in reserving Assembly seats for Limboos and Tamangs

GANGTOK, 18 Feb: The Bharatiya Janta Party’s Sikkim-unit has claimed that the scheduled tribe status for the Limboo and Tamang communities was provided by the BJP-led NDA Government and explained that this has shouldered the party with the responsibility to speak for the rights of these two communities as Scheduled Tribes, especially with regard to Assembly seat reservation for them as scheduled tribes.

The Sikkim BJP president, Padam Bahadur Chettri, while addressing a press conference here today, in turn alleged that the Sikkim Democratic Front government had been ignoring its responsibilities towards getting ST seats reserved in the State Assembly.
He has now called on the State government to come out with a “proper explanation” on why these seats have not yet been reserved.
Highlighting that the State Government has often defended the delay by arguing that a detailed census of the Limboo and Tamang communities in Sikkim was required before seats could be reserved for them, Mr. Chettri pointed out that while such a special census was never carried out, even the Census 2011 operation which was underway at present did not have a provision to work out the percentage composition of the two communities in the State.
The census, a decadal undertaking, will be enumerating the number of Scheduled Tribes all over India. In Sikkim, the Bhutias and Lepchas were already ST before Limboos and Tamangs and Census 2011 will be calculating the total number of STs in Sikkim, including BLs and LTs. The BLs already have community-specific seat reservation in the State Assembly.
Mr. Chettri added that BJP has worked out the number of Limboos and Tamangs in Sikkim [extrapolating the voters list] and pegged their percentage at 15%, entitling them to 5 seats in the 32-member legislative Assembly of Sikkim.
He further informed that the BJP petition in the Supreme Court on the reserved seats issue of the Limboos and Tamangs came up for its fourteenth hearing on 14 February and next listed for end-August, early September.
“Irrespective of the verdict of the Supreme Court of India, the BJP feels that there should be reservation of seats not only for Limboos and Tamangs as ST of Nepalese section but also for general Nepalese of Sikkim as per Article 371F of the Constitution of India,” Mr Chettri adds.
[SAGAR CHHETRI]

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