Mukesh Sharma

Darjeeling District Tribal Welfare Association has welcome the move of GTA who have demanded in the recently held 6th Bipartite meet with the state for the inclusion of a legal amendment to allow reservation for SC and ST communities in all the 45 wards of GTA. In a press release issued by the association writes that despite political safeguard has been articulated in the Indian constitution of reservation in all the election but the same was overlooked during the GTA election process. So the Association has demanded reservation for Tribal in GTA election too at the earliest . It has also said that the proportion of reservation must be based on the total population as per 2011 Census to that of total population of GTA.Since the grant of Tribal Status to Tamang and Limbus in 2003 the association have said that the tribal population within the jurisdiction of GTA is around 31.4% of total populations.

In other hand besides implementing reservation for ST for all electoral process DDTWA has also requested reservation of vacancies for employment in GTA group B,C and D posts in accordance with the proportion of the population ration existing within the GTA where ST population comprises of 33.72% and SC at 9.32%. Any attempt to Subvert the ratio of reservation to any other figure or by WB 100 point Roster would impinge constitutional rights and also be a contravention to basic ethics of GTA Act since the 100 point roster system is a format devised for the entire state of WB wherein ST populations comprises 6% and SC at 22% of the total population of the state inform N.W Sherpa secretary of Kalimpong Wing of DDTWA.