SHILLONG, Dec 11: Ahead of the meeting of the High-Level Committee (HLC) constituted to resolve the long-pending issue related to the Harijan Colony, the people there have exuded confidence about proving they are authorised residents.
The committee is set to meet next week to finalise the report before submitting it to the state government for necessary action.
“The NGOs here often say we are unauthorised residents but we have time and again said that we don’t want to move from here and we have the right over this land. Our ancestors were settled here and we have been here for four-five generations,” Gurjit Singh, chief of the Harijan Colony panchayat said on Friday.
He cited documents of 2008 to point out that the predecessors of the Syiem of Hima Mylliem had allotted the land to the Harijan community long ago although land document was never issued. Recalling that the High Court of Meghalaya in 2019 had made it very clear that agencies should not disturb them in any matter and if at all they want to evict them, they are to approach a civil court, he said that even in 1994, the Shillong Bench of the Gauhati High Court had ruled against their eviction.
“We have contributed to keeping Shillong clean and everybody liked us when we used to do manual scavenging throughout the night. But now when other facilities are available here, many are calling us unauthorised and illegal residents,” he added.
Former Urban Affairs Minister Hamletson Dohling, who is heading a Sub-Committee on the issue, had earlier confirmed that a report was submitted to the HLC, which will meet next week.
According to reports based on the recommendation of the consultative committee headed by Dohling, it was decided that a fresh lease agreement would be signed between the Hima Mylliem and the state government.
The Confederation of Meghalaya Social Organisations (CoMSO), an umbrella body of 19 pressure groups, had resented the inordinate delay by the HLC in submitting its final recommendation on the relocation of the Harijan Colony.
The HLC was constituted by the state government to look into the demand of shifting the Harijan Colony after an altercation in the area in June 2018 spiralled into a violent unrest that paralysed life in the city for weeks.
