Lucknow: The alleged appointment of DK Tiwary as the chairman of the Punjab Scheduled Caste (SC) Commission has left a section of Dalits disgruntled. The additional chief secretary for the Department of Social Justice, Empowerment and Minorities has been handed over the reins of the commission as an additional charge.

The post was lying vacant for the past two years despite the fact that Punjab is a state where every third person is believed to be Dalit. The commission had invited applications for the post in October 2023. Only a retired officer of the state government, belonging to the SC community, was eligible for the post.

The Punjab State Commission for Scheduled Castes has been constituted under the The Punjab State Scheduled Caste Commission Act, 2004. Section 3 (2)(a) of the Act clearly rules that “the Commission shall consist of a  Chairperson, who shall be an eminent person belonging to Scheduled Castes or a retired officer of the Government of the State of Punjab belonging to the Scheduled Castes not below the rank of Principal Secretary”.

Speaking to The Mooknayak, Jatinder Singh Mattoo, president of the Dr Ambedkar Labour Union, said, “The appointment is in violation of the Punjab SC Commission Act, which prohibits non-SC members from occupying the posts of chairperson and the member-secretary.” 

Targeting the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of the state, he alleged the government had amended the legislation to bring down the number of non-official members and also their tenure from five to three years.

However, Vijoy Kumar, special chief secretary to the chief minister, while talking to The Mooknayak, clarified that Tiwari has not been appointed as the commission’s chairman and said that he has only been given a charge to manage the administrative affairs within the department.

Bhawan Nath Paswan of Dr Ambedkar Rashtriya Ekta Manch said, “Additional charges are aimed at only looking after a department until a permanent head takes over, and it is ideally given for a week or a month, not for years. Mr Tiwari has many other tasks, he looks after his ministry and occasionally gets busy in elections. Additional charges will impact the redressal of the grievances of the people.”

Mattoo, however, says that the post has been vacant even before the AAP government took over the state in March 2022.

“It is high time that they appoint a head as it would have obviated the need of handing over the additional charge to someone,” he said.

He said that no appointment for an inordinate time at such a crucial post has an adverse impact on the grievance redressal of the Dalits, who number around 1 crore in a state with a population of about 3 crores.

Punjab, a Sikh-dominated state, has the largest SC concentration in the country. The 2011 Census pegs their number at 28% of the total population of the state — which has often seen a slugfest for the Dalit votes ahead of elections.

The Congress party appointed Charanjit Singh Channi, a Ravidassia (an SC community), as the chief minister in 2021. It was for the first time that a person belonging to the socially outcasted community became the state’s chief minister.

To woo SC voters, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) aligned with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a Dalit led political outfit based in Uttar Pradesh, ahead of the polls. The AAP on the other hand wooed the community by promising Dalit messiah BR Ambedkar’s photo in every government office.

Despite this, the Dalits continue to witness cases of atrocity and face marginalisation.

Headless SC Commissions Across Country

The Mooknayak has earlier reported how the commissions throughout the country have been systematically left leaderless.

It is to be noted that the post of the chairperson of the National Commission of Scheduled Castes (NCSC) was also lying vacant for more than six months after Vijay Sampla resigned as the chairperson in August last year, and it was in March 2024 that Kishore Makwana took over.

In Uttar Pradesh, where the SCs constitute about 21% of the state’s population, the commission has been running without a chairperson since June 2022.

However, Asim Arun, minister of state (independent charge) for social welfare, has been handed over the additional charge of the department.

Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, the SC Commission has had no chairperson since March 2023 — adversely affecting the complaint redressal mechanism.