Govt. not considering any plans for distinct constitutional recognition for DNTs

The Union government is not considering any proposal for distinct legal and constitutional recognition of a category on par with the SC/ST/OBC classifications, for the denotified, nomadic, and semi-nomadic tribes in India, it told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

This comes even as these communities (formerly classified as “criminal” under the colonial-era Criminal Tribes Act, 1871) are organising to push for a “separate column” in the upcoming 2027 Census forms for themselves, in the hopes of building it up into a movement for a fresh classification for communities that were once labelled “criminal”.

In a meeting held on January 30, officials of the Social Justice Ministry assured leaders of the community that they will be counted in the upcoming Census.

Replying to a question from MPs Manoj Kumar Jha (RJD) and Sandosh Kumar P. (CPI) about the issue and the government’s plans for such a new classification, the Tribal Affairs Ministry said that it consulted with the Social Justice Ministry, which said, “There is no such proposal or plan under consideration.”

The communities labelled as “criminal” under the CTA became “denotified” when the Act was officially repealed in 1952. In the following decades, most of these communities have been assimilated into the classifications of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, or Other Backward Classes, depending on their location.

‘Political misclassification’

Now, as these communities organise for a “separate column” in the upcoming caste enumeration exercise, they have argued that their inclusion in the SC, ST, OBC lists was an act of “political misclassification” that had erased the recognition of the specific harm caused to them for having been stigmatised as “criminal” for generations.

The Social Justice Ministry has already written to the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, seeking that a count of DNTs be undertaken, given that they had not been counted ever since the country’s independence. Further in the January 30 meeting, the Ministry officials informed community leaders that the Census office had agreed to do it; however, leaving the community none the wiser about how this would be done.

The latest assessment of these communities (denotified, nomadic, and semi-nomadic tribes or DNTs) was conducted by the Idate Commission in its December 2017 report. It counted about 1,200 communities as DNTs, which had already been classified into SC, ST, and OBC lists. But it had also documented over 260 communities that had not found a place in either of these classifications.

Cultural scholar and professor G.N. Devy, who had formed the DNT-Rights Action Group with author Mahasweta Devi in 1998, leading to the formation of the first National Commission for DNTs, has also stressed the importance of having a “separate, DNT-specific data” during the upcoming Census, adding that there is no concrete data on their population, which could be above 10 crore.