In which Lok Sabha seat, one of India’s Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), Shompen tribe, for the first time exercised their democratic right to vote in April 2024 ?

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Correct — C, Andaman and Nicobar. The Shompen are a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group of Great Nicobar, the southernmost of the Nicobar Islands, and the whole Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands returns exactly one member to the Lok Sabha — so once you know where the Shompen live, the constituency is not a choice at all. The Election Commission's own account of the 2024 general election records the moment in a single sentence: 'In a historic move, the Shompen tribe of Great Nicobar voted in the Lok Sabha Election - 2024 for the first time.' The same record places it among the Commission's inclusion outcomes for that election, alongside the Lambada tribe at Thiruvur and the Nishi tribe in Arunachal Pradesh, and the islands went to the polls in the first phase, in April 2024. What makes this more than a curiosity is what it took. The Shompen are semi-nomadic forest dwellers of the interior of Great Nicobar, a few hundred people in total, living at a distance from settled administration by choice as much as by geography; getting a polling arrangement to them at all required the Commission to build the booth around the community rather than expect the community to come to a booth. The same official record describes free transport being arranged for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in several States and new polling stations being located in previously inaccessible areas, and the Shompen vote is the sharpest single example of that policy working.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Vizianagram, Andhra Pradesh — a real Lok Sabha constituency in north coastal Andhra Pradesh, and a plausible-sounding answer because Andhra Pradesh genuinely does have Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups of its own in the Eastern Ghats. But the Shompen are an island people of Great Nicobar, found nowhere on the Indian mainland, so no mainland constituency can be the answer however many tribal communities it contains.  (b) Tripura East — a Lok Sabha seat reserved for Scheduled Tribes, which is exactly why it appears here: a candidate scanning for a tribal constituency will find one. Tripura's tribal communities are entirely different from the islanders', and the state's own Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group is the Reang, also called Bru. The Shompen have no presence in Tripura or anywhere in the north-east.  (d) Tura — the Lok Sabha constituency covering the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, and likewise a seat reserved for Scheduled Tribes. The Garo are one of the larger tribal communities of the north-east and are not a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group at all; the classification exists for very small, isolated and demographically fragile communities of the kind the Shompen are. Two of the four options being reserved tribal seats is the deliberate design of this question.

Concept: Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups are a sub-category within the Scheduled Tribes, created for communities so small and so isolated that ordinary tribal development programmes do not reach them. The category began on the recommendation of the Dhebar Commission as 'Primitive Tribal Groups' and was renamed in 2006; seventy-five groups are notified. The criteria are specific rather than impressionistic — a pre-agricultural level of technology, a stagnant or declining population, extremely low literacy, and a subsistence economy — and UPSC has keyed as correct both that a stagnant or declining population is one of those criteria and that PVTGs are found in eighteen States and one Union Territory. That one Union Territory is the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and it alone accounts for five of the seventy-five: the Great Andamanese, the Jarawa, the Onge and the Sentinelese in the Andamans, and the Shompen in the Nicobars. Great Nicobar itself is doubly significant in the syllabus, because besides the Shompen it holds Indira Point, the southernmost point of Indian territory, and the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve — and because a large port and development project proposed there has made the island's ecology and its people a live policy question.

State PCS 2024 Q23 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q23 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer