For a while now voices of discontent have been simmering on the issue of enrolment of illegal or ineligible voters in Meghalaya. The issue of influx has been the Khasi Students’ Union’s agenda for well over 30 years, right from the time of Mr Bull N Lyngdoh. Many elections have been fought and won or lost on the issue of the ubiquitous ‘illegal migrant,’ of influx from outside the state etc., without anyone getting any the wiser about the exact number of such dubious residents in Meghalaya. We have a very clear example from neighbouring Assam where till date the Government has not provided electoral photo identity cards (EPIC) to its citizens because of the quarrel over how many are genuine voters and how many are infiltrators. But so far, despite the Assam Movement and later the ULFA militancy not a single illegal migrant has been deported.
This is because the task of identifying an illegal migrant is not easy. Earlier, according to the Illegal Migrant Determination Tribunal (IMDT) the onus of having to prove that someone is a foreigner lay in the one who objects to that person’s identity. But after the apex court struck down the IMDT a couple of years ago, now it is the person of dubious credentials who has to prove his identity through proper documentary proof. The problem with such paper trails is that they are easily obtainable under a corrupt regime. Hence Assam is caught between a rock and a hard place!
In Meghalaya we suffer from a similar predicament. It’s not easy to distinguish between an Indian citizen and someone from across the border. Similarly it is hard to identify an Indian Nepalese, (meaning someone who has settled in India and is a citizen) from someone who is of Nepali origin and a Nepalese citizen. This is a problem area since we have no effective infiltration check gates for people entering the state. And even if we do, they are so ridden with corruption that it is never going to be problematic for them to enter Meghalaya. Every state has a carrying capacity beyond which it breaks. The Government has to take cognizance of this matter. But the NGOs too must ask themselves why people want to come here? If there are no opportunities why would anyone come to Meghalaya? So what are those opportunities? Can they take stock of the job opportunities and ensure that the unemployed youth from the State take up those professions instead of moving out to the metros? The strategies adopted to check influx, however, must rule out violence because that would set the state back by a few years.