Demand For Bhil Pradesh – Burning Issues – Free PDF Download

The trend of Twitter Trends

• On 25^th May 2020, Twitter showed users demanding a separate state called Bhil Pradesh with the hashtag #wewantaseperateBhilPradesh

Who are Bhil people? 

• Bhils or Bheels are a group of tribal indigenous people scattered all over India from Gujarat in the west to Tripura in the far east.
• As of 2013, they were the largest tribal group in India with 1.7 crore population and mostly live in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.
• The tribe is further divided into various sub-divisions.

• STs constitute 8.6 percent of the country’s total population and 11.3 percent of the total rural population.

Bhil Pradesh?

Article 342 of the constitution

• Provides for specification of tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within tribes or tribal communities which are deemed to be for the purposes of the Constitution the Scheduled Tribes in relation to that State or Union Territory.
• In pursuance of these provisions, the list of Scheduled Tribes are notified for each State or Union Territory and are valid only within the jurisdiction of that State or Union Territory and not outside.

Why are Bhils demanding a separate state?

• To safeguard the rights of tribals on their own land, the people of the community are demanding ‘re-acquisition’ of land from where they were made to migrate.
• The demand for a separate state comes from the tribal belts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
• constant negligence from the respective government
• Tribes, whose basic sustenance is historically derived from natural resources, are trying to fit into new modes of economic sustainability.

Failure of Constitutional safeguards

• 5^th Schedule areas
• PESA not implemented properly
• Lack of development
• Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 – not implemented
• Majority of the business in tribal areas are owned by the non-tribal population
• Resources being used by Govt and businesses without bringing development to tribal areas.

Formation of BTP

• In 2017, Bhartiya Tribal Party was formed under the leadership of a tribal leader, a legislator from Gujarat, Chotubhai Vasava.
• It has won 2 seats each in Rajasthan and Gujarat Legislative assemblies .
• In the tribal belt of Rajasthan, ‘Bhil Pradesh’ has started to find resonance.
• The demand has gained prominence with the rise of Bhartiya Tribal Party (BTP), which is aggressively claiming ‘first’ right of indigenous people on all resources.

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