Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has raised the pitch over a key bill to enable political quotas for Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Goa, blaming the Congress for stalling it by not allowing it to come up for discussion in the Lok Sabha.
The bill titled ‘The Readjustment of Representation of Scheduled Tribes in Assembly Constituencies of the State of Goa Bill, 2024’ seeks to grant political reservations to Scheduled Tribes in the state’s Assembly for the first time, and has been a key agenda for all parties in Goa.
Pushing it through as the state’s ruling party, will as such, bring significant political advantages for the BJP when the assembly polls are held in 2027, especially in four of Goa’s 40 constituencies that have a significant population of Scheduled Tribes.
The bill was scheduled to come up for discussion in the Lok Sabha Thursday and Friday, but could not, following disruption in proceedings by the Opposition protesting the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.
Slamming the Congress for allegedly “obstructing” the bill, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant Thursday in a post on ‘X’ said, “The Congress-led INDIA alliance has once again betrayed the Scheduled Tribes of Goa by obstructing the crucial bill.” He added that the bill was initially introduced in Lok Sabha’s 2024 Monsoon Session, but failed to come up for consideration in consecutive sessions as the Opposition kept stalling proceedings.
“They have done the same this time as well. The Congress will be responsible if the Scheduled Tribes don’t get reservation in the 2027 assembly election,” wrote Sawant.
Responding to the criticism, Congress’s Yuri Alemao, Leader of the Opposition in Goa, said the party did not oppose the bill, but was occupied by another issue related to Bihar that was being discussed in the Lok Sabha. “We are with the Scheduled Tribes community. Let the government table the bill again,” Alemao said.
Also Read: Goa’s Pramod Sawant govt faces heat from within—files ‘handled in secret’, tribal bhavan in limbo
Political significance of the bill
Goa-based political commentator Cleofato Coutinho told ThePrint that the bill once passed would bring some uncertainties for some established leaders in Goa. “Goa’s politics is personality-led. If the bill is passed, some constituencies will be marked as reserved for the Scheduled Tribes population and it will threaten the positions of some established politicians there. But, the Scheduled Tribes community has been pushing for the bill, and the backlash, if the government does nothing about it, will be significant,” Coutinho said.
“If the Scheduled Tribes community thinks that the BJP has done nothing to pass this bill and decides to boycott the party in the 2027 election, the party will suffer. So, all of this posturing is mainly to get the narrative right,” he added.
Politicians in Goa estimate the bill to impact four assembly constituencies—Sanguem, Quepem, Priol and Nuvem—inhabited by the majority of the tribal population.
“No major political party is against the bill. Everyone realises its need and importance. But, if the BJP pushes it through, it will definitely have advantages for the 2027 assembly polls,” Govind Gaude, BJP MLA from Priol, one of the constituencies with a significant tribal population, told ThePrint.
Party leaders added that it would help consolidate the BJP’s hold on the four constituencies.
Quepem has been held by the Congress since 2007. In 2019, Quepem MLA Chandrakant Kavlekar joined the BJP midterm along with a bunch of Congress MLAs. In 2022, Kavlekar contested on a BJP ticket and lost to Congress’s Altone D’costa.
Nuvem too has been a Congress seat since the last two elections. In 2022, this seat was won by Aleixo Sequeira who joined the BJP in September that year along with seven other Congress legislators.
Priol was with the Maharshtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) in 2007 and 2012. In 2017, Govind Gaude won the seat as an Independent, and supported the BJP-led government of Manohar Parrikar. In 2022, Gaude won as a BJP candidate. He has, however, had friction with the current BJP government, having been dropped from the cabinet for talking about alleged corruption in the state government in June.
Sanguem, on the other hand, has been a BJP stronghold, with the current MLA Subhash Phal Desai a minister in the Pramod Sawant-led government.
Significant rise in ST population
In Goa, Scheduled Tribes have reservations in elections at the panchayat, zilla parishad and urban local body level. The community, however, does not have any reservation in the legislative assembly.
According to the bill, the population of Scheduled Tribes in Goa stood at a minuscule 566 people as per the 2001 Census while the total population of Goa was 13 lakh. The delimitation exercise was initiated in 2002 and given the 2001 census figures “the Scheduled Tribes communities of Goa were not be able to avail the benefit of reservation of seats as per the Constitution for their communities in the Legislative Assembly”.
But in the 2011 census, the number rose to 1.49 lakh, accounting for 10.21 percent of the total population of 14.58 lakh.
The surge was due to the addition of three new communities to the Scheduled Tribes list in 2003. These are the Kunbis, Gawdas and Velips.
The population of the Scheduled Castes, in contrast, was 25,449 as per the 2011 Census and the community has one reserved seat in the assembly polls—Pernem.
“Thus, a peculiar situation has arisen in the state, wherein the population of the Scheduled Tribes in the state vis-à-vis the population of Scheduled Castes is considerably higher but no seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribes…,” the bill says.
In July 2023, the Goa Assembly passed a private members’ resolution that recommended political reservations for the Scheduled Tribes in the assembly polls.
Since then, there have been calling attention motions raised by MLAs across parties in the Goa Assembly to determine the status of the bill. There have also been intermittent protests by members of the Scheduled Tribes community.
The Union Cabinet had approved the bill in March last year, after it was introduced in Parliament’s Monsoon Session in the Lok Sabha, but did not go through.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also Read: Goa didn’t choose to become a casino city—now it’s a state-sponsored moral gamble