Bhubaneswar, March 26 (Odisha.in) The Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has urged the Union Tribal Affairs minister V.Kishore Chandra Deo to address the issues of Odisha’s Konda Reddy community who have been seeking tribal status since a long time.
About 25,000 people of the community mostly live in the southern district of state’s Malkangiri while another one lakh of them stay across the border in Andhra Pradesh.
In Andhra Pradesh they are recognized as a tribal community while in Odisha they have yet to be enrolled in the government list of tribes.
In a letter he sent on Monday Ramesh has requested the tribal affairs to immediately call a meeting of National Commission of Scheduled Tribes and the Registrar General of India (RGI) very soon to resolve the long-pending issue of the community in Odisha at the earliest.
“The Maoists have taken advantage of these grievances and built a strong base in the area. We have to address this problem at the earliest” he said in the letter, a copy of which is in possession of the odisha.in.
Citing that the people of the community met him during his visit to Odisha recently, Ramesh in his letter said the South Odisha where the community people live was part of erstwhile Madras presidency and at that time they were recognized as tribals.
Odisha.in