Nagaland closes its door to NCSC

New Delhi, November 14 (The Pioneer): Nagaland has given a jolt to Buta Singh by refusing to welcome the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) team. The state government has said the visit would be a futile exercise as there are no SCs in the tribal territory. “I write this letter to let you know that Nagaland is a tribal state where all the indigenous inhabitants of the state belong to Scheduled Tribes,” State Chief Secretary Lalthara has written to the commission.
The state Chief Secretary’s letter to Joint Secretary T Theethan of the commission quoted the figures of the latest census (2001) to press his point. “There is not a single Scheduled Caste population within Nagaland state,” Lalthara said in his letter. The commission had written in July to the state Chief Secretary to make arrangements for the stay and provide logistical support for the Z security covered to Buta Singh and 12 other members of the official delegation.
“The state, therefore, has no programme or scheme relating to Scheduled Castes, nor any social security or other protective measures relating to the SC community,” the letter said. “In view of the above situation, you may like to advise the commission to review their proposed visit to Nagaland state, as no worthwhile or meaningful discussion or interaction could possibly be made with Nagaland Government officials and its public leaders on the issue of Scheduled Castes,” the top official of the Nagaland Government wrote in his letter.
After its first letter of July 22 to the state government, when the commission dispatched another letter on October 29, the chief secretary wrote back to it on November 4 and faxed the same on November 12 after The Pioneer published the news of ostensive merry-making exercise in the garb of commission’s visit to the North-Eastern states.
Interestingly, Nagaland is not the only state where the commission sent proposal of the visit to take care of the SC issue. On July 22, the same communiqué was sent to Andaman and Nicobar for a state review of the SCs condition by the full commission in Port Blair, but this too was not entertained by the state government. Surprisingly, during his entire term which comes to end soon, Buta’s team did not care to visit states like Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and AP, where there is sizeable SC population.