ELECTIONS to the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) have been postponed four times. His is unprecedented in the history of Meghalaya. The Government’s plea is that certain sections of the Sixth Schedule have to be modified to enhance the number of seats in the GHADC from the existing 30 to 40 (35 directly elected members, with five nominated members). This was the demand made by the two militant groups, the ANVC and ANVC (B) as a condition for signing a truce in September last year. The demand was acceded to by the State and Central Government. The onus for making amendments to the Sixth Schedule, as with other aspects of the Constitution lies with the Parliament of India. To tweak the Sixth Schedule for meeting the demands of militant outfits that no longer hold clout and at a point in time when at least a dozen other militant outfits have emerged in Garo Hills, is a vacuous exercise. The Central Government must have been adequately briefed about the futility of needlessly tampering with the Constitution, if, after that, ‘lasting peace’ is unlikely to prevail.
The peace pact with the ANVC and ANVC (B) came at a time when the MUA-2 Government was facing a series of onslaughts from the more vicious militant group – Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) and similar atrocities on the people of Garo Hills from the ANVC (B). The Government believed at the time that neutralizing a weaker group by signing a peace pact with that group would allow it to direct its focus on the more virulent group. But this has not happened. The GNLA still creates a fear psychosis in Garo Hills. And new militant groups have since emerged and are led by former militants who also want their place in the sun. After all, when the gun becomes the idiom for wresting concessions from the state and when the state itself succumbs to such tactics, then similar actions will proliferate. Undoubtedly there is governance deficit in Garo Hills, but will that be addressed by having more members in the GHADC? Or is this a ploy of the State Congress Party to enhance its clout in the region by nominating all the surrendered militants as Party candidates? Politicians are known to play populist politics but when that becomes a hindrance to democracy then someone has to intervene. Putting on hold elections to the GHADC is fraught with dangerous consequences for democracy and for which the people of Garo Hills are paying a huge price.
