Mukul wants report sans NGOs’ participation
SHILLONG: Out of the three Committees constituted by the State Government in July this year to recommend measures to address the issue of influx following the demand of the pressure groups in this regard, the Committee headed by Deputy Chief Minister Rowell Lyngdoh has become a non starter.
The Committee was entrusted with the task of studying and examining a few amendments to the provisions of Benami Transaction Act, 1980 and Tenants Verification Draft Bill.
Lyngdoh informed on Wednesday that the Committee which he is heading has not been able to meet since the pro-ILP groups have refused to participate in the discussions.
According to Lyngdoh, the Chief Minister, however, wanted him to complete the task even without the participation of NGOs and hence he called a meeting on October 24 to discuss the matter.
Besides the Rowell Committee, the other two Committees are headed by Additional DGP SK Jain and Chief Secretary Barkos Warjri.
The Jain Committee has already submitted the report to the Government on the entry and exit points in State except Garo Hills as the process of identifying the entry and exit points in Garo Hills was delayed due to flood.
The Committee headed by the Chief Secretary Barkos Warjri was asked to study and examine various legislative measures to achieve the objective of coming up with the comprehensive mechanism to check influx.
Regarding the delay on submitting report by the Committee headed by him, Rowell Lyngdoh said that the pro-ILP groups were supposed to nominate three of their representatives as members in the Committee headed by him.
“They did not submit the names since they did not want to participate in the deliberations,” Lyngdoh informed here on Wednesday.
Lyngdoh said that earlier, the Government had even fixed a meeting but it was postponed since the pro-ILP groups did not turn up.
“I had thought that it will be futile exercise to re-convene the meeting of the Committee since NGOs have backed out. We all know that it was the same pro-ILP groups who made the suggestion to bring few amendments to the existing Acts for addressing the issue of influx,” Lyngdoh said.
Lyngdoh conveyed the message to Chief Minister that pro-ILP groups were not keen to participate. “But the Chief Minister insisted that the Committee should complete its task even without the NGOs”, Lyngdoh said.
“As per the directive of the Chief Minister, I have decided to convene a meeting of the Committee at the Main Secretariat on October 24 at 3 pm,”