College admission of tribal students delays due to bureaucracy

18-year-old A Jeevitha, a tribal girl based in Mettupalayam village in Thiruvannamalai is now running from pillar to post to get a community certificate. The irony is that the Jeevitha’s mother who use to accompany her to Tashildar office and revenue divisional officer is no more. Jeevitha lost her mother last month due to a snake bite and plus two passed out student is now knocking the doors of village headman, tashildar, RDO seeking the malaikuravan community certificate issued for scheduled tribes. Jeevitha in her petition to the collectorate and RDO offices have referred the identity of her paternal uncles who have migrated to Chennai. Her blood relatives posses the tribal certificates, but the red tapism and the bureaucracy has been haunting the girl from joining the college. 

All my friends have started applying to the colleges seeking admission but I am not able to complete the application process without the community certificate. “I am already into mental trauma due to my mother’s demise and the delay in my college admission is adding to it and my father who is a daily coolie is not able to understand the paper works the process behind availing the community certificate,” Jeevitha broke down while sharing her story. 

“There are more than 100 tribal students awaiting community certificates in the tribal villages of Tiruvannamalai district. The court has passed orders, collector has issued orders to give community certificates but bureaucracy is a hurdle for these tribal students,” said E Kumar, general secretary, Adi Tribal Welfare Association. 

When contacted Chengam assembly constituency legislator M P Giri admitted that there are such issues in tribal pockets coming in his constituency. I have already taken up this genuine case with the local revenue officials. Some of them have wrongly entered their family details during the previous notification period and this became a litigation and the court has ruled in favour of the tribes. Further the identification process of tribes is also over, but the tashildars are shying away from issuing certificates as it is a complicated procedure. I have already raised the issue in the assembly and trying my best to help the tribes and again I will ask the revenue officials to clear the pending applications, the ruling party MLA exuded confidence. However the MLA was not able to fix a time frame for the issue, thanks to the every busy revenue department. 

There are people who migrate and then return back seeking tribal certificates. There are no digital records to verify the nativity and any error in issuing a ST / SC certificate may affect the career of revenue officers and so it takes time to complete the process explained an informed government official passing the buck on tough government norms.