Centre ‘not classifying’ denotified tribes despite survey report

Five years after the Union Government initiated an ethnographic effort to classify 268 denotified, nomadic, and semi-nomadic tribes who were thought to have never been classified before, the Union Government told Parliament on Wednesday (December 3, 2025) that it is not considering any proposal to classify these communities into SC, ST, and OBC categories afresh.

This comes two years after the Anthropological Survey of India completed the ethnographic study of these communities and recommended their reclassification. In their report submitted in 2023, the AnSI had recommended fresh classification of 85 of these communities, reclassification of nine others, and noted that many others were only partially classified.

This exercise was initiated in 2019 after the Government constituted the Development Welfare Board for Denotified, Nomadic, and Semi-Nomadic Communities (DWBDNC). This board was set up following the Idate Commission’s report of 2017, which had also flagged the need for these communities’ proper classification into SC, ST, or OBC lists, as have previous Commissions that have looked into denotified communities.

While setting up the board, the government entrusted the task of classification of these communities to a NITI Aayog panel, which had commissioned the Anthropological Survey of India to study them.

Pressure for quota

Responding to questions in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday (December 3) about this study and the government’s plans to finalise the classification of these communities, the Social Justice Ministry said, “There is no proposal under consideration.”

This comes even as civil society organisations representing denotified communities in north India have been pushing the government to recognise them as a separate scheduled category akin to SCs, STs, and OBCs. Their rationale has been that very few states were issuing community certificates to these communities, in the absence of which, they are unable to claim benefits meant for them.

The Ministry said that the DWBDNC was already administering the SEED scheme for the welfare of all denotified, nomadic, and semi-nomadic communities. However, officials of the Board have told The Hindu previously that a major reason for the slow uptake of the SEED scheme was the lack of clarity on how to classify these communities.