LTVC urges Sikkim MPs to press tribal status and Limboo-Tamang seat reservation in Parliament’s Monsoon Session
Limboo Tamang Voluntary Committee asks Sikkim’s Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs to raise demands for Scheduled Tribe status to left-out communities and for Limboo
The Limboo Tamang Voluntary Committee (LTVC) has urged Sikkim’s two Members of Parliament to raise two long-pending issues during the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament. The committee said the matters concern identity, representation, and constitutional rights for the Limboo-Tamang community and other left-out groups in Sikkim.
Sikkim has one Lok Sabha MP and one Rajya Sabha MP. The Lok Sabha MP is Indra Hang Subba of the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM), and the Rajya Sabha MP is D T Lepcha of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Tribal status request for “left-out” communities
On the tribal status issue, LTVC pointed to a State-level High Level Committee led by Anthropological Survey of India director Prof B V Sharma. LTVC said the committee prepared a fresh ethnographic report for granting Scheduled Tribe status to 12 left-out communities in Sikkim, and that the final report was submitted to the Chief Minister in August 2025.
LTVC also said the report was unanimously adopted by the Sikkim Legislative Assembly and then forwarded to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI). The committee questioned whether ORGI has accepted the new ethnographic report and asked what stage the examination is at in the Centre. It also asked when the 12 communities will be granted Scheduled Tribe status.
Limboo-Tamang seat reservation still pending
LTVC said another issue, reservation for the Limboo-Tamang (LT) Assembly seat, has been pending for 26 years. It stated that constitutional provisions exist but that the SKM government has not yet passed any resolution or bill in the Sikkim Legislative Assembly with a concrete formula to solve the LT seat reservation matter.
According to LTVC, the Supreme Court has issued directions in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 443 of 2017 and Writ Petition (Civil) No. 187 of 2019 (Yehang Subba & Anr. vs Union of India & Ors.), dated 23.11.2023, for the Union Government to take recourse for proportional representation of the Limboo-Tamang community in the Sikkim Legislative Assembly. LTVC described this as an administrative failure on the part of both State and Central governments and urged Sikkim’s MPs to raise the issues with a concrete seat-sharing formula and seek necessary constitutional amendment in the current session.
