Article 342 of the Constitution vests the power to specify Scheduled Tribes in the President, not the Governor, making the process a central executive function with parliamentary oversight — a design choice with significant governance implications.
Under Article 342, the President, after consultation with the Governor of the concerned State, issues a public notification specifying communities as Scheduled Tribes for that State or Union Territory. The Governor's role is consultative, not determinative. Parliament alone can subsequently include or exclude communities from this list through legislation.
Scheduled Tribe status is state-specific, meaning a community notified as an ST in one State does not automatically acquire that status in another. This reflects the socio-cultural and historical variation in tribal identity across regions. A community must be separately notified for each State where it seeks constitutional protections.
This state-specific framework ensures that reservation benefits, forest rights under the Forest Rights Act, and tribal sub-plan allocations are targeted accurately. However, it also creates anomalies where the same community faces differential access to entitlements when members migrate across State boundaries.
The Lokur Committee and subsequent reviews have highlighted delays and inconsistencies in ST recognition. A transparent, criteria-based national framework — while preserving state-level specificity — would reduce litigation and improve administrative clarity.
Centralising ST recognition at the presidential level with parliamentary amendment safeguards against political arbitrariness, yet the state-specific design demands periodic review to address inter-state inequities and ensure that constitutional protections reach intended beneficiaries uniformly.
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