All 60 of the state’s MLAs should travel to New Delhi to put pressure on the central government to grant Meghalaya the Inner Line Permit (ILP), opposition Chief Whip and Mawlai MLA, Process T Sawkmie, said today.
As the implementation of ILP is the desire of all the MLAs and the “the people of Meghalaya”, if the Centre delays in granting ILP, the 60 elected representatives could picket Parliament as it sits for the upcoming budget session, he added.
In this the MLAs could be inspired by the efforts of the farmers of Punjab and Haryana, who have been protesting agricultural reforms that they fear will harm them for several weeks now, in the national capital.
“Taking the example from the protest of the farmers we need to take our protest to New Delhi. So that the central government knows that we need ILP,” Sawkmie said.
The Meghalaya Assembly had passed a unanimous resolution at the height of the agitation against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act at the end of 2019. Since then the central government granted Manipur its demand for the implementation of ILP.
That it granted it to Manipur could be down to the fact that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rules both in the Centre and Manipur, Sawkmie suspects.
“What I see on my part is this: earlier, during the Congress-led regime in Manipur, the Assembly had passed two resolutions to implement ILP there, but the Centre did not give in. But when there was a BJP-led government there, the Centre readily gave ILP to Manipur,” he stated.
