New Delhi
The resignation of Harsh Chouhan, the Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST). has led to much speculations about the reasons behind his exit eight months before the completion of his term. His three-year term was to come to an end in February 2024.
While Congress general secretary and former Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh alleged that Chouhan paid the price for confronting the Union Environment Ministry on the issue of forests and tribal rights, NCST sources said the Government and the Constitutional body were also not on the same page on many other issues.
This, even as some BJP sources claimed Chouhan’s strong tribal connect will be made use of in the impending Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. As he was holding a Constitutional post, his services could not be taken in the recent Karnataka polls where the BJP drew a blank in all the 15 tribal seats. This came just a few months after the party swept the tribal belt in Gujarat winning 24 of the 27 ST seats in the State.
Chouhan, with over three decades of hardcore grassroots experience working among the Bhil tribals in Jhabua, had opposed the Government’s Forest Conservation Rules 2022 saying it would have serious impacts on the rights of STs and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers. While the Government dismissed his objections, he too remained firm on his assertion.
“In February 2021, Harsh Chouhan was appointed as Chairperson of the National Commission on Scheduled Tribes, a Constitutional body. He has been taking very strong objections, like many activists and I have done, to the way forest laws have been diluted in the last two years, hurting the interests of adivasis. He has confronted the Environment and Forests Ministry boldly. Now he has paid the price for his commitment and courage,” Ramesh tweeted.
“He has been forced to resign eight months before his term ends. So much for the Modi government’s concerns for the welfare of tribal communities and the independence of Constitutional authorities,” Ramesh said.
Chouhan could not be contacted. The face-off over the contentious Forest Rules apart, sources said ever since Chouhan took over he had sought to assert the NCST’s Constitutional standing taking exception to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs showcasing the body as one of its wings.
It was against this backdrop that under him the format of notices and summons from the NCST started to have a formal, distinct look (on letterheads) dispelling the general notion of the Commission being one of the wings of the Government.
Then again, despite the Government’s tribal push, the NCST has been functioning with just 50 percent of the sanctioned staff. So much so that the position of Vice-chairperson has remained vacant since July 2019, when the then incumbent Anusuiya Uikey was appointed the Governor of Chhattisgarh. Currently, Uikey is the Governor of Manipur.
News agency PTI quoted sources saying Chouhan’s resignation follows the government’s annual performance appraisal. “He had been facing health issues and could attend only two hearings. The member (Ananta Nayak) conducted the rest,” an official source told the news agency.
According to NCST rules, the Chairperson is responsible for presiding over the hearings in the Commission. In the absence of the chairperson, the Vice-chairperson should conduct the hearings.
A senior NCST official said, “Chouhan resigned on June 26 and we received information about the President accepting his resignation on June 27.”
With Chouhan’s resignation, the tribal panel is currently without a chairman and is operating with only one member, Ananta Nayak.
Before Chouhan’s appointment in February 2021 for a three-year term, the panel had been functioning without a Chairperson for around a year after the completion of Nand Kumar Sai’s tenure as its head on February 27, 2020.
(Read his full interview to The Indian Tribal published on April 12, 2023)
