Purulia dist achieves 100% enrollment of Birhor community

Kolkata: The Purulia district administration has made notable progress towards inclusivity for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Bengal by achieving 100 per cent enrollment among the Birhor tribes residing in a few villages in and around the Ayodhya Hills in Bengal.

According to sources, there are 313 people belonging to the Birhor tribal community residing in remote villages in Bagmundi block among whom those eligible to vote (above 18 years) is 181.

“It was a challenge to enrol the voters of this community in the electoral roll.

We reached out to them on multiple occasions explaining the importance of being a part of the electoral process.

We have carried electronic voting machines (EVMs) to their habitat and have trained them on how to cast their votes,” Rajat Nanda, District Election Officer (DEO), Purulia said.

Birhor are tribal forest people, traditionally nomadic, living primarily in Jharkhand. They speak the Birhor language which belongs to the Munda group of languages of the Austroasiatic language family. Some of them are also found in Odisha, Chhattisgarh and

West Bengal.

The total population of these tribals is about 10,000 as per the last census.

Some sources, however, claim that their numbers may have decreased further over the years.

They continue to pursue the “primitive subsistence economy” based on nomadic gathering and hunting, particularly for monkeys.