SHILLONG: The all-party meeting to discuss amendment of the Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act will be held after the Diwali break and the government will decide on the best way forward after listening to everybody.
Chief Minister Conrad Sangma told reporters on Wednesday that the government will call an all-party meeting once it is ready with documentation and paper work regarding the Residents Act.
“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 consultations and we keep meeting people to get feedback,” he said.
According to him, mechanisms can be discussed but the objective is to safeguard the interests of the indigenous people.
He added that the state government is very clear about the objective to protect the indigenous people of the state while maintaining that ILP is one mechanism to achieve the objective and the not the objective in itself.
“We have to be very clear in our thoughts. What is our objective? The objective is to protect our people and ILP is one mechanism to do that but the objective is not ILP. We need to be clear and have to distinguish,” he said.
He assured that there are mechanisms to protect the people and ensure that people’s interests are safeguarded which he said should be the objective around which the government should work.
He stated that the government will continue to work with the objective to ensure that the indigenous people are protected.
“Focusing on ILP and demanding ‘we want ILP’ is departing from the main issue, which is protecting our people. There are legislations and ways in which we can do that and that is the reason why in the past the government has taken a decision to bring the Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act,” he said.
The Confederation of Meghalaya Social Organizations has been demanding incorporation of ILP provisions in the Act.
The CoMSO has pushed for the amendment of the Act which should include its four proposals – legal provision should be in place to bar an Indian or a foreigner from entering the state without valid permission, penalty for persons when they enter the state without valid permission and validity period of not more than 179 days of the permission granted and to prevent other tribals from buying land in the state.
