Political manipulation of caste/tribe classification undermines the integrity of affirmative action. Discuss with reference to recent controversies over ST certification.

Scheduled Tribe status is conferred not by self-assertion but by a constitutional process — the President notifies tribes under Article 342, and only Parliament, by law, may alter that list [1]. When this classification bends to electoral calculation, affirmative action loses both accuracy and legitimacy.

How classification becomes a political instrument

• Contested certification: the Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch's national convention (September 2026) resolved that ST criteria be kept free of "political manipulation", alleging that non-Adivasis in several States are being encouraged to obtain ST certificates, "dividing" genuine Adivasis [5].
• Religion as a delisting ground: rival bodies (Janjati Suraksha Manch, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram) seek a religion criterion to delist converts — though Article 342 schedules tribes, not religious communities [5][1].
• Vague criteria widen discretion: the Lokur Committee (1965) tests — primitive traits, geographical isolation, "shyness of contact" — were termed obsolete by a Ministry of Tribal Affairs Task Force (2014), yet still guide scrutiny [2].

Why this erodes affirmative action

• Dilution: a fixed quota stretched over expanded lists pushes the genuinely marginalised further down the queue.
• Fraud: false certificates deprive real claimants — the Supreme Court in Kumari Madhuri Patil (1994) mandated State Scrutiny Committees precisely for this [4].
• Social cost: competing claims fuel intra-tribal division and agitational politics.
• Legitimacy: reservation is reframed as patronage rather than reparative justice.

Strengthening the firewall

• Existing modalities — State proposal, Registrar General of India concurrence, NCST approval, then legislation [3] — insulate procedure, but not the criteria themselves.
• Replace Lokur's anthropological tests with transparent, evidence-based indicators of ethnographic distinctiveness and socio-economic deprivation [2]; publish reasons; fix time-bound disposal; keep classification religion-neutral.

Classification is the gateway to every tribal safeguard; its credibility determines whether affirmative action reaches the intended. A criteria review, insulated from partisan pressure and anchored in verifiable data, would restore Article 342's original promise — protection determined by evidence, not by electoral arithmetic.