Rajya Sabha on Tuesday passed the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order Amendment Bill, 2024 and Constitution (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) Order Amendment Bill, 2024, clearing the way for the addition of several new communities to the Scheduled Tribes list of Odisha and the inclusion of synonyms and phonetic variations of existing tribes in the ST lists of both Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Both Bills received support from MPs across party lines.
Among the additions were notably seven Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) (a subset of STs) — four in Odisha and three in Andhra Pradesh — whose independent names had been specifically added as synonyms or sub-tribes of communities already on the ST lists of these States.
While replying to the discussion on the Bills for Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, which were taken up together, Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda took a dig at previous non-NDA governments for considering the most vulnerable STs — the PVTGs — as tribals just in name but never thinking about including them as entries in the ST lists.
