UPSC job ad kicks up ‘Meena-Mina’ row, recruiter accused of trying to ‘divide ST community’

Minas are classified as STs in the central list and are thus eligible for reservation. But Meenas have been kept out of the quota fold even though they say they are the same group.

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) headquarters, which conducts the Civil Services Exam, in New Delhi | Photo: Manisha Mondal | ThePrint

New Delhi: The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has come under criticism over a job advertisement issued this week that seeks to draw a distinction between the Minas and the Meenas.

The Minas are classified as Scheduled Tribes in the central list and are thus eligible for reservation. But the Meenas have been kept out of the quota fold even though members of the community say they are the same group as the Minas and blame the different spellings on variations in dialects and pronunciation from place to place. 

The Minas and the Meenas primarily inhabit Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.   

In a notification for the post of Company Prosecutor in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs this week, government recruiter UPSC said, “Candidates having ST Community ‘मीणा’ have been considered Not Eligible” for reservation.

It added that candidates having “ST Community mentioned as ‘Mina (मीणा)’ have been considered Eligible as in his Community certificate ‘MINA’ has been mentioned as his community”. 

The ad drew attention when Tribal Army, a pan-India non-profit organisation working for the welfare of indigenous tribes, lashed out at the UPSC for “creating a divide in the community”.

“While considering ‘Meena’ as an unreserved category, the UPSC has stated that only ‘Minas’ are a reserved category. This error is totally unacceptable. In the past, the Vasundhara (Raje) government (in Rajasthan) has had to suffer because of this error. Now this game is being played at the Centre. Mina-Meena are the same. This is intolerable,” Tribal Army founder Hansraj Meena tweeted Wednesday. 

गृहमंत्री अमित शाह जी के जन्मदिन के अवसर पर 22 अक्टूबर को देशभर की बहन-बेटियों के साथ असुरक्षा व अन्याय को लेकर व्यंगात्मक व रचनात्मक थोड़ा सुधार करते हुए #राष्ट्रीय_महिला_असुरक्षा_दिवस मनाया जायेगा। हम उम्मीद करेंगें सभी साथ, सहयोग व समर्थन करें। जय हिंद। जय भारत।

— Hansraj Meena (@HansrajMeena) October 21, 2020

Tribal Army spokesperson S.P. Singh, who is a former IAS officer, described the distinction as “arbitrary”. 

“To keep a community away from the benefits of reservation just on the basis of spelling is completely unacceptable and arbitrary. Just because you spell a surname differently, you cannot be penalised for it,” he said.

“Moreover, a much larger number of people from the community write ‘Meena’. Will all of them have to prove that they belong to the ST category? This is an attempt to create a reservation within reservation, and artificially divide a community to win over a section of its votes,” he added. 

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said on Twitter Wednesday that there is no difference between ‘Mina’ and ‘Meena’ except for the spelling. 

In 2018, he added, the state wrote to the central government explaining the same, but has not yet received a reply. In light of the UPSC ad, the state will again write to the Union government, he said. 

संघ लोक सेवा आयोग (UPSC) द्वारा कॉरपोरेट अफेयर्स मंत्रालय में कंपनी प्रॉसीक्यूटर के पद पर भर्ती के लिये विज्ञापन जारी किया। इसमें #Mina जाति वाले अभ्यर्थियों को अनुसूचित जनजाति मानकर आरक्षण के लाभ के लिये योग्य (Eligible) माना गया है
1/

— Ashok Gehlot (@ashokgehlot51) October 21, 2020

Reached for comment, a senior official of the UPSC said the commission “only extends reservations to those who are mentioned in the central list of the Ministry of Social Justice”. “Any caste which does not find mention there cannot be given reservation. It has always been the practice at the commission,” he added.

ThePrint reached Union Social Justice Ministry spokesperson Nanu Bhasin for a comment on the issue via call and text, but received no reply.

Issue blew up in Rajasthan under Raje

The Meena vs Mina issue had blown up in Rajasthan a few years ago, while the state was led by Vasundhara Raje of the BJP. 

In an RTI reply filed in 2013, the central government said it only recognises “Mina” as the reserved group, and not “Meena”. The next year, the Rajasthan government sought to put an end to a practice in the state that allowed Meenas to change their spelling to Mina, and vice versa. 

However, with the move triggering agitations by Meena leaders across the state, the Raje government withdrew the order. 

“Both Meena and Mina belong to the same community and the confusion has (been created) due to lingual diversity of Rajasthan. Our Constitution gave the status of Scheduled Tribe to the Mina (community) in 1956 and due to the absence of Hindi language in the paperwork, the Meena surname couldn’t be added,” former Union minister Namo Narain Meena had said in 2015.

“For 60 years, the tribal people have been enjoying the benefits of reservation, so why is the government deliberately creating confusion now? I appeal to Vasundhara Raje to present a proposal in Parliament to recognise Meena and Mina as the same community,” he added.

A year later, in 2016, Raje said the Meena-Mina dispute “is unwarranted”. 

BJP MP Kirodi Lal Meena, who was at the forefront of the agitations against the state government’s move to disallow people from changing their spelling, told ThePrint, “I have raised this issue in Parliament also. The state government needs to write to the Centre that ‘Minas’ and ‘Meenas’ are the same. If people stop getting reservation because there is no exact English translation for the word ‘मीणा’, they will protest.”