J&K Govt clueless about how many nomadic tribals actually live in the state, reveals RTI
Akshay Azad Jammu, Mar 25: The Jammu and Kashmir government has a separate Tribal Ministry along with J&K Advisory Board for Gujjars and Bakerwals but both have no data about the number of tribal population, which is still nomadic. A RTI application was filed by this correspondent to the department of Tribal Affairs seeking information of total number of Bakerwals as per last three census reports. It was also sought that out of total population of Bakerwals how many were semi-nomadic and settled? The Department of Tribal Affairs forwarded the RTI application to J&K Advisory Board for Gujjars and Bakerwals, which in turn furnished data of whole tribal population in the state, which stood at 14,93,299, in which Gujjar Bakerwals and over dozen other tribes are included. The department further informed that there was no separate data of the Bakerwals population even in the Census of 2001 and 2011 respectively. In response to the question of categorization of B...