TURA: The All Meghalaya Minority Students’ Union (AMMSU) has urged the Meghalaya government to take urgent steps to address the plight of the married Meghalaya women in Assam who were left out of the NRC up-dation process.
In a memorandum submitted to Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, the union urged the government to take up the matter with the Assam Government and facilitate the reference of all Meghalaya related cases to the State Government and to allow the formation of a separate Foreigners’ Tribunal for dealing with such cases.
It may be mentioned that the Assam government has given 120 days’ time for filing appeals before the Foreigners’ Tribunal of Assam to establish their citizenship and unless the Meghalaya government can convince its Assam counterpart to refer Meghalaya related cases to the state’s own Foreigners’ Tribunal, the genuine Indian citizens from Meghalaya who are residing in Assam may be declared as foreigners, which in turn would compel them to come back to Meghalaya as illegal citizens.
Earlier, the Assam government had taken up with the state government the verification of data and certification of genuineness of Meghalaya women living in Assam. However, due to some problems in the verification process, the names of many of the women were dropped from the Assam NRC of 2019.