Opposition party Congress has put the blame on the State Government for reported uprising among tribal groups in Khunti and adjoining areas which has been manifested through several incidents of Pattalgadi- the community’s tradition way of demarcation and signage.
The party citing poor state of health, education, drinking water and other sort of amenities for the villagers despite so much fanfare created around has even called on all the stakeholders to join hands over the issue.“Different agencies, media are explaining the Pattalgari taken place at Khunti-Adkai region in recent times but none has been able to decode it properly. Even the Government using its diversionary tactics is trying to divert attention from ground reality. Fact of the matter is that the Government needs to do lot of explaining about missing most basic facilities in the villages amid all the tall claims made and schemes rolled out,” said AICC secretary and in-charge of Chhattisgarh Arun Oraon on Tuesday.Defending the tradition quite prevalent among the tribals, Oraon said that it had been used for demarcating village boundaries or even burials since time immemorial.
“Even in recent times, when the PESA Act was notified in 1996, Dr BD Sharma and Bandi Oraon had led the drive at Karra and other places and did Pattalgari to make aware tribals about the act.
There is nothing wrong in it. But problem arises when the villagers are up in arms, averse of entry of outsiders in their area and defining the Constitution wrongly. Government should find out what forced them to resort to that,” said the leader who has been an IPS officer previously.
Hitting out the BJP-led Government, Oraon questioned the well-propagated exercise ‘yojna banao abhiyan’. “The Chief Minister is going gaga over the yojna banao abhiyan and claimed that schemes are being made sitting on mat with people in villages. If it is being done then I am failed to understand why the villages have lost their confidence on the system in this fashion. What is troubling them,” said he.
The leader citied some of the steps such as amendments initiated into the CNT-SPT acts which has been dubbed as motive to snatch their land away, as one of the causes of distrust developed between the community and the Government. “At one hand schemes made by the Government are not reaching them as you can see state of drinking water, electricity, school, health centers in their areas still after 70 years of the Independence. One the other their resources are being looted. And yet you expect them to remain a mute spectatorIJ It is too tough a call,” said Oraon.
He at the same time also admitted that anti-social forces are taking advantage of the vacuum created in such backward areas and are fueling the fire but also put blame on the system which is not able to control the situation despite being capable of that. Arun Oraon also extended party’s support to the Government in dealing with the dangerous situation and denounced any attempt to play politics over it.
