SHILLONG: Chief Minister Mukul Sangma has expressed his reservations about Aadhaar, demonetisation and GST.
Sangma, who is yet to enroll for the unique identification number, has asked the Centre not to make Aadhaar issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India mandatory for the people of Meghalaya.
Talking to media persons here on Wednesday, Sangma said he has already discussed the matter with Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and both have agreed to move in the right direction over the matter.
Sangma, however, said there were certain challenges when students from Meghalaya who are studying outside are asked for Aadhaar and hence the State Government is not stopping their enrolment for it.
“The Central Government must understand the complexities, challenges and concerns in the North East which are unique,” the chief minister said while urging the states of the North East to come together and take up the issue collectively.
Maintaining that the right to privacy is crucial for democracy, Sangma informed that he has sought a report from the authorities about a village where people have reportedly stopped sending their children to schools after the school pressurized them for Aadhaar.
The chief minister also lamented that there is a total lack of synergy and coordination among the different authorities of the Union Government as different authorities are giving diverse directions to the people on the issue of Aadhaar.
As India is yet to have the National Register of Citizens, the segregation of genuine citizens and other groups is still an issue in the region.
More than 200 people from the Khasi-Jaintia Hills region have joined the campaign against Aadhaar that was launched by the Meghalaya People’s Committee on Aadhaar and as many as 226 people came to sign the documents for opting out of Aadhaar and around the same number have taken draft letters for getting signed by family members.
Sangma also denounced the Centre for not paying heed to states’ concerns before implementing the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
“They just went ahead foreseeing from a particular day, they should start GST and there is a whole challenge of dislocation in the process of implementation. There were notifications after notifications and an element of surprise hitting all people,” he told reporters.
Sangma further added that there should be a due diligence of how the programme would be implemented and its fallouts must be anticipated.
Demonetisation was another issue for which Sangma targeted the BJP-led NDA saying there was no sign of black money being unearthed or terror funding stopped. “They had some other agenda behind demonetisation which is yet to be known and it will be known in due course of time,” Sangma said, adding that the agenda behind the move should be found out.
With BJP planning to observe November 8 as Anti-black Money Day, Sangma alleged that the process of demonetisation last year started a huge corruption process and made some people richer “but surprisingly, the Union Government never tried to go into details”.
“We will have to remind people about the anti-people agenda of BJP and its associates like Shiv Sena and NPP,” Sangma said.
