TURA: Garo historian and former Pro Vice-Chancellor of NEHU’s Tura campus, Dr Milton S Sangma has stated that the imbroglio over the Codification of the Garo Customary Laws could have been avoided had the copies of “The Assam and Meghalaya Autonomous Districts (Constitution of District Council) Rules, 1951 (Amended)” been made available to all the members of the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC).
Sangma, who was part of the first committee that was formed by the GHADC to codify the Garo Customary Laws in 2003, issued a statement to The Shillong Times on Monday in which he recalled that although the committee had submitted its report in 2005, yet it was taken up only in 2009 under the title “The GHADC (Codification of the Garo Customary Laws) Bill, 2009.” “This bill had received the prior approval of the Governor of Meghalaya for introduction in the next session of GHADC, but there were strong objections to this bill by a number of NGOs,” said Sangma and added that under the prevailing circumstances the GHADC appointed a Review Committee on February 11 2016 to study the codification which had already received the prior approval of the Governor for introduction in the next session.
“If you go through the Assam and Meghalaya Autonomous Districts (Constitution of District Councils) Rules, 1951 (Amended), we will find that the GHADC has not followed the procedure as laid down in the Rules, 1951 (Amended) in introducing and passing the Codification of Garo Customary Laws Bill, 2009,” claimed Milton Sangma.
According to him, under the 1951 (Amended) Rules there is Section No. 78 which provides only for a select committee in case of opposition to some clauses of the Bill.
