The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday approved The Constitution (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) Order (Amendment) Bill, 2022 to remove the Bhogta caste from the list of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and include additional communities in the list.
The Bhogta caste will be included instead as a Scheduled Tribes in the State.
The government keeps amending the lists originally notified in 1950, based on requests made by the States.
The Bill further amends the schedule to the Scheduled Tribes order to include the Deshwari, Ganjhu, Dautalbandi (Dwalbandi), Patbandi, Raut, Maajhia, Khairi (Kheri), Tamaria (Tamadia) and Puran communities in the Scheduled Tribes list of the Jharkhand.
Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda informed the House that similar amendments would be brought for other States too. “We have done [such amendments] for Arunachal Pradesh and Karnataka. Now, it is being done in the case of Uttar Pradesh, Tripura and Jharkhand. We are doing research on Odisha. We have completed the work in Chhattisgarh, but we are working on some observations given on that by the Law Ministry,” he said.
The Bill also aims at helping people get more benefits from the provisions of reservation in education and government jobs.
