The Coordination Committee of Tribal Organisations of Assam (CCTOA), an umbrella body comprising 14 tribal organisations representing existing Scheduled Tribe communities, has formally rejected the Group of Ministers' recommendations to grant Scheduled Tribe status to six communities—Tai Ahom, Chutia, Moran, Motok, Koch-Rajbongshi, and Tea and Ex-Tea Garden Tribes—describing the proposal as unconstitutional, historically inaccurate, and potentially detrimental to the constitutional safeguards and reservation benefits enjoyed by current ST groups.

The CCTOA's stance rests firmly on the constitutional distinction between Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, asserting that ST recognition is exclusively for communities displaying primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with broader society, and backwardness, criteria established by the 1965 Lokur Committee report, which the six communities do not fulfill according to historical assessments.

Furthermore, the committee highlighted that in 1993, following detailed research by the Assam Institute of Research for Tribals and Scheduled Castes, these communities were recommended and subsequently notified as Other Backward Classes by the National Commission for Backward Classes, arguing that reclassification to ST status purely for political reasons would violate established precedents and undermine existing classifications.

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The CCTOA also raised concerns over the independence of the expert committees relied upon by the GoM, noting that members were nominated by organisations affiliated with the claimant communities, and pointed to specific inconsistencies, such as the ethnographic committee's recommendation for Scheduled Caste status for only 38 Tea and Ex-Tea Garden subgroups, contrasted with the government's broader push for ST status across all 74.

This rejection comes in the wake of the GoM's November 2025 interim report proposing a novel three-tier ST classification—ST (Plains) and ST (Hills) for existing groups, and a new ST (Valley) category for the six communities—which has ignited intense protests across tribal areas, including the vandalism of the Bodoland Territorial Council secretariat in Kokrajhar by demonstrators fearing dilution of their rights and privileges.

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