Students of Adhiyan community in Tamil Nadu who live in Nagamangalam in Tiruchi district are suffering as they are not given ST certificate by the authorities.
The members of the community take vows that they are tribesmen and that their ancestors were fortune-tellers who reach homes with bulls to tell fortunes. Members of the Adhiyan community said they belonged to tribal communities and hailed from Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu.
The members said that an anthropological study in 2001 recorded their origin from the tribal community but the revenue officials and village officer level officials did not provide any certificate to prove that they belonged to the tribal community.
KR Kannaiyan, 53, a farmer from the Adhiyan community, told IANS, “After some of our family friends got the certificate, we thought it would be useful for our children to get ST reservation. However, the village officials and Revenue department officials told us that they cannot provide ST certificate on the basis of anthropological studies.
He said that many students have ended their dream of higher education as they are not able to pay higher tuition fee for collegiate education. It is to be noted that if they had ST certificate, students could avail free education and also get scholarship.
The tribal farmer said that now he has been directed to approach Tribal Research Centre, Ooty to get the certificate. Kannaiyan told IANS that some families got the certificate in 2017 but currently they are not able to get it as the Tribal Research Center in Ooty is now the agency issuing the tribal certificate.
When contacted, an official of the Tiruchi District Collector’s office told IANS that they are awaiting the report of the Tribal Research Center on granting ST status to the community.
M. Kannan, a member of the Adhiyan community, told IANS, “If we had got the ST certificate earlier, our children would have been in government service and we would have requested the authorities to address the issue and help our children get reservation. Huh.
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