Orissa Govt plans to drop Kui tribals from ST list

The Naveen Patnaik Government has proposed deletion of Kui tribes from the 18 listed Kondh tribes in the state...

The Naveen Patnaik Government has proposed deletion of Kui tribes from the 18 listed Kondh tribes in the state in its effort to resolve the controversial fake caste certificate issue, which was one of the main factors behind August and September’s riots in Kandhamal district.

Senior officials of the SC/ST Department said the deletion of the Kui tribes would be formalised at a meeting of the state-level Tribal Advisory Committee on January 19. The Committee would then send the proposal to the Union Tribal Affairs Ministry for final deletion.

Kui tribes are one of the 18 Kondh tribes in the ST list of the Orissa Government. The other tribes are Khond, Kond, Kandha, Nanguli Kandha, Sitha Kandha, Kondh, Buda Kondh, Bura Kandha, Desia Kandha, Dungaria Kondh, Kutia Kandha, Kandha Gauda, Muli Kondh, Malua Kondh, Pengo Kandha, Raja Kondh and Raj Khond.

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Officials said though Kui was a local dialect, it had been considered a specific tribal group and got a place in the list of tribals. In Kandhamal, a large number of Scheduled Caste people who converted to Christianity have reportedly obtained ST certificate by claiming that they were Kui tribals since they spoke the dialect.

The clamour for an ST certificate had peaked as, under the existing laws, an SC person converting to Christianity is stripped of his SC status whereas for STs, the tribal status is not affected and he continues to enjoy the perquisites of a tribal despite changing his faith.

“The dialect was creating all the confusion in the minds of officials. Though lots of people in Kandhamal speak Kui language, not all of them are tribals. So we proposed to delete it for simplification,” said a senior official of the SC/ST Department.

Since the riots, specially appointed Vigilance inspectors have been investigating 593 cases of fake tribal certificates and most of them have been found to be false, officials said.

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But tribal leader and the chief of the Kandhamal Zilla Kui Samanwaya Samiti, Lambodar Kanhar, said the deletion of Kuis from the tribal list would not solve anything in the strife-torn district.

“Our identity originates from Kui. Before it was known as Kandhamal, the area was known as Kuidina. By deleting Kui from the list, the Government has hurt our sentiments,” said Kanhar. “Instead of deleting it from the list, the Government should appoint better inspectors to differentiate the fake tribals from the real ones in Kandhamal.”