On Tuesday during the 10^th session of the 7^th Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly, the Arunachal Government announced that it will cancel all the Scheduled Tribe certificates of children born to tribal women who married non-tribal men after the screening of each of the cases by a committee.

The announcement was done by Alo Libang, Minister for Social Justice, Empowerment, and Tribal Affairs (SJETA) when senior Congress MLA Lombo Tayeng, asked about the issue of offspring of tribal women marrying non-tribal men.

According to the Minister, Libang, “the government had earlier notified the ‘Arunachal Pradesh Schedule tribe Certificate Issuance guidelines on August 1, which has provisions for cancellation, impounding, or revocation of ST certificates issued to ineligible persons.”

Under the guidelines, if the authority issuing the document is satisfied that an ST certificate has been obtained by any person by furnishing false information or by misrepresenting any fact, or suppressing any material information, it may cancel, impound or revoke the certificate, the Minister further said.

He also informed that till now nine such disputed cases of issuance of ST certificates have been placed in front of the scrutiny committee. And already five of them has been disposed of while the rest of them are undergoing hearing.

“Out of the remaining four, one pertains to issuance of ST certificate allegedly in respect of an offspring of a tribal woman married to a non-tribal. The hearing of these cases is under process,” the minister said.

Further, it was also informed that the concerned deputy commissioners were directed to give their opinions following which the committee set up, would take necessary steps.

According to reports by PTI, responding to a supplementary by Tayeng for fixing a cut-off year for cancellation of ST certificates, Libang assured the legislators that the matter would be discussed with all the members of the House.

 (Source- PTI)