Article 338A, and the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes

In one line

Article 338A, inserted by the Eighty-ninth Amendment, establishes the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes in terms identical to article 338, and the reason for the split is that the two groups' disadvantages differ in kind.

What article 338A provides

Identical in structure to article 338. A Commission for the Scheduled Tribes; a Chairperson, a Vice-Chairperson and three other Members appointed by the President by warrant under hand and seal; the power to regulate its own procedure; the same six duties of investigating and monitoring the safeguards, inquiring into complaints, participating and advising on planning, presenting reports to the President, making recommendations, and discharging such other functions as the President may specify; the same laying obligation with a memorandum of action taken and reasons for non-acceptance, before Parliament and before a State Legislature through the Governor; the same civil court powers; and the same duty on the Union and every State Government to consult the Commission on all major policy matters affecting Scheduled Tribes.

Before the amendment there was one Commission for both groups under article 338, whose clause (10) also brought in the backward classes and the Anglo-Indian community. The amendment separated the Scheduled Tribes and left article 338 with the Scheduled Castes.

Why the split was made

Three reasons, and the second is the substantial one.

Volume. A single Commission covering the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, the backward classes and the Anglo-Indian community was covering a very large share of the population with one body of five members.

Difference in kind. This is the reason worth developing. The disadvantage of the Scheduled Castes is social and is attached to a person wherever they go; the disadvantage of the Scheduled Tribes is territorial as well as social and is attached to a place. A commission dealing with untouchability, atrocities and access to public facilities is doing different work from a commission dealing with land alienation, forest rights, displacement by projects and the administration of Scheduled Areas, and one body could not develop expertise in both.

And the constitutional architecture is different. The Scheduled Tribes have article 244, the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, article 339(2)'s Union power to direct a State on tribal welfare schemes, the Panchayats extension legislation of 1996 and the Forest Rights Act of 2006. None of that applies to the Scheduled Castes, whose apparatus is the atrocities legislation of 1989, the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and article 17.

The consequence for MU's Q7(d)

Her question asks for the powers and functions of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, in the singular, and the correct answer begins by noting that there are two Commissions.