SHILLONG: Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Conrad Sangma informed that the date and time for the all- party meeting to discuss the amendment of the Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act would be scheduled after the Diwali break and government would decide on the best way forward after listening to everybody.
Commenting on the amendment of the Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act, he told reporters on Wednesday that the government was on the job to consult and discuss and would call all-party meeting once the government is ready with documentation and paper work.
“Once we are ready with the documentation and paper work, we will be calling people especially, political parties, for consultation and discussion so that we take everybody on board and then the government will decide on how to move forward with that. We are open to consultation and we keep meeting people and get feedback,” he said.
According to him, the mechanisms can be discussed but the objective is to keep the indigenous people safeguarded.
He said that the state government was very clear about the objective to protect the indigenous people of the state while maintaining that ILP was one mechanism to achieve the objective but objective is not ILP.
“We have to be very clear in our thoughts, what is our objective? Objective is to protect our people and ILP is a mechanism to do that but objective is not ILP. We need to be clear and have to differentiate,” he said.
The CM assured that there were mechanisms to protect the people and ensure that people’s interests were safeguarded which, he said, should be the objective the government should work for.
He stated that the government would continue to work with the objective to ensure that the indigenous people are protected.
Sangma said, “Focusing on ILP and sing ‘we want ILP’ is going away from the main issue that is, protecting our people. There are legislations and ways in which we can do that and that is the reason why in the past also the government has taken a decision to ensure that by bringing the Residents Act (Meghalaya Safety and Security Act)”.
It may be mentioned that Confederation of Meghalaya Social Organisations has been demanding the incorporation of Inner Liner Permit (ILP) provisions in the Act.