11 December 2000

STRINGENT PUNISHMENT TO ANTI-SC/ST OFFICERS PROPOSED

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: A Governors' panel, examining the issues concerning Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes at the instance of President K R Narayanan, is understood to have decided to recommend enactment of a law by Parliament prescribing stringent punishment to the nodal officials who fail to implement recommendations of the National Commission on SCs and STs.

The decision was taken in the light of the Commission's current and past chairmen, Dilip Singh Bhuria and Hanumanthappa, telling the panel on Saturday that neither the Centre nor the States were bothered about the view of the Commission as many of its recommendations have not been implemented.

The panel, chaired by Maharashtra Governor Dr P C Alexander and having five other Governors as its members, also decided that each one of them should select one of the five states (not own state) having large SC/ST population and pay on-the-spot visits to their districts sometime in the third week of January for making an assessment of the SCs and STs. These states are Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa.

It may be mentioned here that the Governor's panel was constituted by the President at the Governors' conference held in July to provide him a report on how to give a new thrust to the welfare programmes for SCs and STs. Besides Dr Alexander who is the chairman, other governors on the panel are: Dr V S Rama Devi (Karnataka), Suraj Bhan (Himachal Pradesh), M M Jacob (Meghalaya), M M Rajendran (Orissa) and Paramanand (Haryana).

The panel, which held a 3-day session in the Parliament House Annexe session last week listening to governors of various states, chief secretaries and other officials of the states and others, kept its proceedings so confidential that the Delhi Media did not get even whiff of the event. The diktat of the President's Secretariat as well as that of Dr Alexander is that the panel has to work in total secrecy, so much so that even the agenda papers were marked "SECRET."

Suraj Bhan, during his tenure as the Uttar Pradesh Governor, used to spill the beans by disclosing how the panel was encouraging the governors to be active and vigilant as he used to be in pulling up the state governments for their apathy towards problems of SCs and STs, but he too escaped without comments citing the secrecy they have been told to maintain.

The next session of the panel is planned in February when it will interact with the Union Ministers and senior bureaucrats before getting down to draft the report to be submitted to the President before March-end.

Sources said the Panel has already received replies from the state governments in response to a questionnaire and these are being analysed now by Mumbai's Tata Institute of Fundamental Research for incorporation in the final document. END