The State of India’s Scheduled Areas

Subject :Polity

Section: Constitution

What are Scheduled Areas:

Scheduled Areas, covering 11.3% of India’s land area, are designated in 10 states.
In 2015, Kerala proposed to include several habitations, gram panchayats, and wards in Scheduled Areas, but the Indian government’s approval is pending.
However, many Adivasi organizations have persistently demanded the inclusion of villages in Scheduled Areas, and this has not been addressed in the 10 designated states or others with ST populations.
Consequently, 59% of India’s Scheduled Tribes (STs) are excluded from Article 244’s benefits, denying them rights under laws applicable to Scheduled Areas.
The Bhuria Committee recommended their inclusion in 1995, but this remains unimplemented.
The absence of viable ST-majority administrative units is cited as a reason for not including these villages.

How are Scheduled Areas governed:

The President of India designates India’s Scheduled Areas.
States with Scheduled Areas must establish a Tribal Advisory Council with up to 20 Scheduled Tribe members to advise the Governor on ST welfare matters.
The Governor submits an annual report to the President on the administration of Scheduled Areas.
The central government can provide directives to the State concerning the administration of Scheduled Areas.
The Governor has the authority to repeal or amend laws enacted by Parliament and the State Legislative Assembly within the Scheduled Area.
The Governor can make regulations specific to Scheduled Areas, including controlling the transfer of tribal land among STs and regulating land allotment and money-lending to STs.
Despite these powerful provisions and responsibilities vested with Governors, they have been rarely implemented, except briefly in Maharashtra from 2014 to 2020.
The real activation of these provisions occurred when Parliament passed the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, or PESA, in 1996.
PESA empowered gram sabhas, allowing them to exercise significant authority through direct democracy, emphasizing that higher-level structures should not assume the powers and authority of the gram sabha.

Who decides a Scheduled Area:

The Fifth Schedule confers powers exclusively on the President to declare any area to be a Scheduled Area.
In 2006, the Supreme Court held that the identification of Scheduled Areas is an executive function.

How are Scheduled Areas identified:

Neither the Constitution nor any law provides any criteria to identify Scheduled Areas.
But based on the 1961 Dhebar Commission Report, the guiding norms for their declaration are:
- preponderance of tribal population,
- compactness and reasonable size of the area,
- a viable administrative entity such as a district, block or taluk, and
- economic backwardness of the area relative to neighbouring areas.
No law prescribes the minimum percentage of STs in such an area nor a cut-off date for its identification.

Constitutional provision regarding administration of Scheduled Areas:

Article 244, pertaining to the administration of Scheduled and Tribal Areas, is the single most important constitutional provision for STs.
Articles 244(1) provides for the application of Fifth Schedule provisions to Scheduled Areas notified in any State other than Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram.
The Sixth Schedule applies to these states as per Article 244(2).

Which States are having Fifth Schedule Areas:

The Fifth Schedule provides for the administration of tribal Areas in ten states in India, including Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Telangana.