Several leaders, who attended a meeting organised by Girijana Aikya Vedika (GAV) here on Sunday, strongly opposed the move to include new castes in the ST list.
Vedika national president Vivek Vinayak told reporters that the vedika adopted a unanimous resolution opposing the move and decrying the statement of Jana Sena Party founder Pawan Kalyan to take up the issue of including fishermen in ST list with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The meeting held at Girijana Bhavan, among others, was attended by TDP MLAs G. Eswari, Sarveswara Rao, former Ministers M. Balaraju (YSRCP), P. Balaraju (Congress) and G. Sandhya Rani, MLC from Vizianagaram district.
Mr. Vinayak said Justice Lokur Committee, set up by the Government of India, had stipulated several conditions like biological and anthropological background, socio-economic background and other parameters for inclusion of new castes in the ST category.
Owing to the stringent conditions stipulated by the committee, proposals to include 600 castes were pending with the Centre for past 15 years. The number of tribal castes enjoying ST status is around 700.
Mr. Vinayak said the conditions recommended by the committee had been incorporated in the Article 342. In Andhra Pradesh (undivided), the number of communities availing ST status is 35-13 in AP and 12 in Telangana.
He said the then Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao in 1986 issued an executive order to increase the reservations from 4% to 6% in proportionate to the population of tribal people. He said now there were proposals to include Boya, Valmiki and fishermen in ST category.
