Union tribal minister Jual Oram has sent a letter to BJP MP from Sikkim Dorjee Tshering Lepcha, saying the Registrar General of India (RGI) hasn’t considered the Sikkim government’s proposal to grant tribal status to 12 communities in the Himalayan state.

In the Darjeeling hills also, there is a longstanding demand to accord Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to 11 Gorkha communities — Kirat/Khambu/Rai, Gurung, Mangar, Thami, Sanyasi (Jogi), Bahun, Chhetri, Bhujel, Kirat/Dewan, Sunuwar and Newar.

The 12th community for which the ST status is proposed is Majhis of Sikkim.

The content of the letter dated September 10 aligns with the communication that residents and leaders of Darjeeling have been receiving for the past couple of years.

Oram has told the Rajya Sabha member that “according to the prescribed modalities, proposals recommended and justified by the state government/UT can be processed and the same has to be concurred with the RGI and the National Commission for Schedule Tribes (NCST) for consideration for amendment of legislation to grant the status”.

“RGI has replied that the issue has already been examined by them and not considered for recommendation,” read the letter.

With regard to the Majhi community, the minister said “no proposal is received by this Ministry from the Government of Sikkim”.

Oram said the comments of the RGI had been sent to the Sikkim government for “justification”.

The BJP had promised to grant tribal status to the 12 communities in 2014 and the same was included in the party’s 2019 Lok Sabha election manifesto.

In its reply to a query under the RTI, the RGI had said it couldn’t pursue the Bengal government’s recommendation to the Centre in 2014 to grant the ST status to the 11 Gorkha communities. The RTI reply triggered charges that the Bengal government’s recommendation wasn’t watertight.

“Now that Sikkim’s proposal has met the same fate, it has raised questions on whether this demand will ever be met by the Centre,” said an observer from Darjeeling.

Darjeeling BJP MP Raju Bista, however, allayed such fears.

“This is a standard reply that bureaucrats prepare. The demand will be fulfilled by political will and we are confident about it,” said Bista.

Three committees had been formed by the Centre since 2016 to look into the Bengal government’s proposal to grant tribal status to the 11 communities.

The final report compiled in 2019 by a team headed by M.R. Tshering, joint secretary, ministry of tribal affairs, put the ball in the court of the office of the RGI.

The Telegraph had earlier highlighted a letter written by the additional registrar general in the office of the RGI to the joint secretary in the ministry of tribal affairs on March 24, 2017. The letter said, “inflow of Nepalese immigrants will further increase if the said communities are granted ST status”.

The letter further observed: “The consequences of specifying all these (Gorkha ) communities as STs will be that almost all the permanent residents of Sikkim will be Scheduled Tribes, and the more backward communities like Lepcha and Bhutia (who are ST) would be disadvantaged and deprived.”

The fact that members of many of the communities seeking the tribal status are Hindus was also seen as a stumbling block to the fulfilment of the demand.