On February 8, 2021, the Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Ms. Renuka Singh Saruta, in her response, provided details of the assigned strength and vacant positions in the headquarters and regional offices of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST).
Out of the assigned strength of 54 positions in the headquarters of New Delhi, 32 have been filled and the remaining 22 are vacant. In the regional offices of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, the vacancies stand at 12 in Bhopal, 9 in Bhubaneswar, 13 in Jaipur, 6 in Raipur, 4 in Ranchi and 8 in Shillong. In total, out of 124 assigned positions across New Delhi and 6 regional offices, only 50 positions have been filled.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the former Minister of Women, Family, Maternity and Child Welfare and Tourism (Uttar Pradesh) also asked the Centre to provide the State-wise details of cases dealt with by the National Commission during each of the last three years along with the current status of such cases.
In the period between 2019 and 2020, out of 1,560 total cases from all States and Union Territories, 1,225 cases are under process i.e., those cases already taken up with the concerned authorities but not yet finally resolved/closed. Taking the period from 2017 to 2020 into consideration, the maximum number of pending cases arise between 2019-2020.
In terms of complaints related to atrocities against the Scheduled Tribe, Rajasthan has consecutively topped the chart for two years with 353 cases in 2018 and 233 cases in 2019. In the year 2018 and 2019, the total number of cases filed with the NCST stood at 2,874 and 934 cases were pending. Lastly, from 2017-2018, a total number of 1,786 cases were filed from all States/UTs and pending cases stood at 972.
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs also furnished information on the total expenditure incurred by the National Commission in Delhi and the above mentioned six regional offices. For the year 2019-2020, the allocation of funds stood at Rs. 16,57,00,000 and the expenditure was calculated to be around Rs. 12, 25,00,000.
Recently, in January 2021, the Supreme Court had issued notice on a plea seeking appointment of full time Chairman and other members to National Commissions for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (NCSC and NCST). The petition filed by an NGO called People’s Charioteer Organization had stated that due to these vacancies, these commissions have not provided any relief to SC-ST communities.
Further they have even failed to publish their annual reports from time to time. The last Annual report of the NCSC that is publicly available is for the year 2016-17 and for NCST the latest available Annual report is for the year 2015-16.
The answer may be read here:
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