Four days after the Chhattisgarh government, on July 7, finally approved the draft rules for the implementation of the revolutionary Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), which vests powers to decide on tribal community properties with the Gram Sabhas, the Gujarat Congress has immediately dispatched its tribal legislators, former MPs and leaders to the poll-bound State.
At long last, the rules were approved at a cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Bhupesh Baghel in Chhattisgarh, a state government spokesperson said.
In tribal-dominated South Gujarat, the Congress’s sitting legislators held a press conference on Monday at the party headquarters in Gujarat. The same responsibility was handled by leader of the opposition in the Guajarat assembly, Sukhram Rathva, himself a tribal from Chhotaudepur; Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Jagdish Thakor; former PCC chief Arjun Modhwadia; and GPCC chief spokesperson Manish Doshi as they addressed media persons.
The tardy implementation of PESA would be the key campaign issue in the 27 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST) in Gujarat, which is poised to be the Congress’ mainstay if the party wishes to better – or even match – its 2017 performance, when it had won 77 seats.
Of the 27 reserved seats, the Congress won 15 in 2017 while its alliance partner, the Bharatiya Tribal Party, won 2 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed nine and one seat was won by an independent candidate.
The PESA Act was enacted by Parliament in 1996 to ensure self-governance for people living in Scheduled Areas. States were required to formulate rules for the effective implementation of the Act to strengthen gram sabhas in Scheduled Areas.
Also read: How a History of Broken Promises Has Let Down India’s Scheduled Areas
Chhattisgarh health minister T. S. Singh Deo, who also holds the Panchayat and Rural Development portfolio, told the media on July 7 that the Congress’s promise in the 2018 assembly elections to formulate rules for the implementation of the PESA Act was fulfilled on Thursday.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had made the promise to implement PESA in the state. Deo also thanked chief minister Baghel for approving the draft rules, which will now pave the way for the Act’s implementation.
“Under PESA, all sections of society would get representation in the gram sabha samities (committees),” he said in a series of tweets.
इन नियमों की स्वीकृति पर मुझे बहुत प्रसन्नता है कि पंचायत व ग्रामीण विकास विभाग की जिम्मेदारी निभाते हुए एक बड़ी उपलब्धि कांग्रेस पार्टी, श्री राहुल गांधी जी, मुख्यमंत्री जी व सभी कैबिनेट के साथियों के साथ हम लोगों ने छत्तीसगढ़ के आदिवासी अंचल के नागरिकों को उपलब्ध करवाई है।(5/5)
— T S Singhdeo (@TS_SinghDeo) July 7, 2022
“I am very happy to share with you all that as per the intention of Shri Rahul Gandhi Ji, we had promised to implement PESA rules in Chhattisgarh in our Jan Ghoshna Patra, and it was fulfilled today,” the minister said.
“I would like to thank Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and my cabinet colleagues for approving the draft which was prepared after discussion with the national and regional public representatives of Scheduled Tribe communities, party representatives and senior social workers during the last 2.5 years,” he added.
As per the draft rules, there will be a minimum of 50% representation of STs, while Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC) and unreserved classes will also get representation according to their population, the minister said.
Speaking at the Surat press conference, former union minister Tushar Chaudhary, former South Gujarat MP Kishan Patel and sitting tribal MLAs Anand Chaudhary, Anant Patel, Punaji Gamit and Sunil Gamit, said at a time when the Adivasi community in Gujarat is passing through an existential, social, economic and cultural crisis, the BJP government is depriving them of their rights.
The Congress government in Chhattisgarh has demonstrated its party’s commitment to the issues of tribals and made the PESA rules, as promised in its Chhattisgarh manifesto, they said.
Rathva pointed out that the framing of the PESA rules in 2017 was, in fact, a negation of the very spirit of the law and was ultra virus of the legislation since the Gram Sabha had been vested with its rights in tribal areas only on paper. The final authority on any key decision remained with the state machinery, controlled by the district collectors and district development officers, he argued.
What is PESA?
PESA extends the provision of the Indian constitution to formalise the three-tier Panchayati Raj system to fifth Schedule areas with certain modifications and exceptions. While the 73rd and the 74th amendments to the constitution, passed in 1992, took the three-tier Panchayati Raj governance structure to rural and urban parts of the country, the tribal-dominated areas, listed under the fifth schedule of the constitution, were kept out of the purview of the Panchayati Raj Acts.
PESA, enacted in 1996, took local self-governance rules to the areas listed under the fifth schedule.
This article was first published on Vibes of India.