SHILLONG, Dec 31: No to Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and yes to Inner-Line Permit (ILP) topped the list of issues in Meghalaya in 2020. These are likely to continue in the New Year despite a breather for the agitating groups in the form of an entry-exit gate started at Umling, Ri-Bhoi recently.
The year began with meetings with the central leadership after the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution in December 2019 to urge the Centre to implement ILP in the state.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah had asked the MDA government to talk after Christmas 2019 when a team from the coalition visited New Delhi to press for implementing ILP in the state besides exempting Meghalaya from the purview of the CAA.
There have been conflicting reports about the Centre’s stand on ILP, demands for which gained momentum in the state after Manipur was granted the ILP regime to placate anti-CAA protestors. But New Delhi has so far not indicated whether or not ILP would be implemented.
Several NGOs in the state have been pressuring the government to aggressively take up the matter of implementing ILP with the Centre. Even the Congress, which was averse to ILP all these years, has changed its stand and supported the call for introducing ILP in the state.
Meanwhile, the NPP issued a gag order on party workers and leaders, prohibiting them from commenting on the social and political impact of the CAA on the people of the North East. They maintained that the order was issued to avoid confusion with the CAA.
The state unit of the BJP, on the other hand, decided to organise programmes as part of the party’s 10-day mass contact drive to mobilise support for the CAA as per the directive of the high command while Chief Minister Conrad Sangma reiterated that the non-scheduled areas of the state should be exempted from the purview of the amended Act.
Pressure groups such as Confederation of Meghalaya Social Organisation (CoMSO) petitioned the Parliamentary Standing Committee that all of Meghalaya should be declared as a tribal area under Sixth Schedule and also announced a stir over ILP as no assurance from the Centre came up on the issue.
The meeting between Shah and Sangma on the ILP issue was not conclusive except for the former’s assurance of holding talks after the Delhi Assembly elections of February 2020. This did not go well with the pressure groups and the agitations resumed.
The Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) continued to organise public meetings across the state to sensitise people about the need for ILP and opposition to the CAA. Traders big and small, entrepreneurs and those in the hospitality industry said the agitations affected their business.
As the Centre chose to dilly-dally on ILP, the state government was asked to strengthen existing laws. Former Governor Tathagata Roy broke his silence on the ordinance on Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act, 2019, and said he had returned it to the government because of certain drawbacks.
A video on the Tricolour being set ablaze surfaced soon after. The view also showed leaflets in the local dialect, demanding ILP at any cost. Amid all these, curfew was imposed in Shillong and Sohra and mobile internet suspended for 48 hours after a KSU activist was killed and four others injured in a clash between members of the union and a group of non-indigenous people at Ichamati under Shella, East Khasi Hills.
A day later, a person was killed and several others injured when a group of masked men went on a stabbing spree in Iewduh. Apprehending serious deterioration of law and order in the wake of the group clash at Shella, curfew was clamped in Shillong.
The death toll in the violent incidents rose to three when a resident of Pyrkan in the Shella area, stabbed by miscreants, was declared brought dead at the Ichamati CHC.
As Shillong continued to remain tense following the spate of violence, the KSU warned that the situation could worsen if the ILP was not implemented immediately. The situation threatened to snowball after a labourer from Assam was stabbed in Mawkhar even as the Assam government said it rescued at least 350 of its people from Ichamati.
Sangma agreed to convene an all-party meeting to discuss the issue besides taking it up with his Assam counterpart Sarbananda Sonowal. The police arrested 24 people in connection with the mob violence as the situation in Shillong began improving.
In an attempt to provide some respite, the state cabinet approved the Meghalaya Resident Safety and Security (Amendment) Bill, 2020 and Migrant Workers Bill. The Chief Minister introduced the amended Residents Bill in the Assembly as the state government maintained it was pursuing the ILP issue with the Centre.
This did not quieten the pressure groups. COVID-19 struck soon after to give the state government some breather.
The police picked up two KSU members in the Iewduh stabbing case as discussions were on to review the COVID-19 scenario. A city doctor tested positive for the virus, leading to a series of lockdowns and marking the beginning of the COVID-19 episode in the state.
Violence, however, resurfaced when five boys playing basketball at Lawsohtun were attacked. Acting swiftly, the police picked up 11 suspects in the assault case.
If the man-made disaster were not enough, rain wreaked havoc in parts of the state and a few lives were lost to landslides.
The state seemed to have some control over the pandemic situation but issues kept on surfacing. One of them was the alleged explosion in a uranium effluent tank at Nongbah Jynrin.
The state government debunked the allegations and asked NEHU and IIT-Guwahati to carry out an in-depth study on the leakage and also the radiation level as claimed by pressure groups and a few independent experts.
The Ichamati issue was back again and this time it was after the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights directed the SP concerned to enquire and submit its enquiry report within October 7.
The state DGP’s office directed the Superintendent of Police, East Khasi Hills to conduct an enquiry into the alleged “institutionalised harassment” of non-tribal women and children in the Ichamati area bordering Bangladesh apparently as a fallout of incidents of the violence in February.
The probe report stated that allegation of harassment by the district administration and police was not based on facts and that the hardships faced by the women and children of Ichamati were due to COVID-19.
The Crime Investigation Department (CID) of Meghalaya also charge-sheeted more than 70 people in the Ichamati case under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.
As an apparent sequel to the recent demonstrations by certain Bengali organisations in Kolkata Meghalaya House and subsequently at Malidor on the Meghalaya-Cachar border protesting “harassment” of non-tribal residents of the troubled area, KSU volunteers went to town with some provocative posters. The police removed these posters before long but they had already evoked reactions from other states.
As the COVID-19 situation improved and relaxations were put in place, the issue of the Barik mall that the state government intended to build surfaced. It faced stiff opposition from political leaders and civil society groups who choose “green lungs” over concrete buildings.
The ILP issue returned, and fed up with the state government’s alleged sloth in finding a comprehensive mechanism to check influx, disgruntled pressure groups from Ri Bhoi district “set up” their own facilitation centre at Umling along the Guwahati-Shillong highway. But the district authorities and police “stopped” this centre from functioning.
Meanwhile, the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC) passed three resolutions in October dealing with the implementation of the Residents Act and ILP. A month later, KSU and other groups renewed their pro-ILP agitation with a sit-in demonstration at Malki Ground.
Members of the Federation of Khasi, Jaintia and Garo People, Hynniewtrep National Youth Front, Ri-Bhoi Youth Federation, Garo Students’ Union, A’chik Youth Welfare Organisation and Association of Democracy and Empowerment took part in the demonstration.
Apart from ILP, the protesters pressed for speedy construction of the entry and exit gates, scrapping of the CAA, inclusion of Khasi language in the 8th Schedule besides implementation of the MRSSA.
The CoMSO also renewed its agitation against the delay in the implementation of the ILP. They urged all 60 MLAs to go to New Delhi and extract the Centre’s nod to ILP.
The year ended with CoMSO taking out a massive torch rally from Polytechnic till Motphran demanding ILP while commemorating the 158th death anniversary of legendary freedom fighter, U Kiang Nongbah. The agitators vowed to continue agitating in the New Year if the Centre extends the delay.