The Hynñiewtrep Integrated Territorial Organization (HITO) has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking measures that would depoliticise the district councils in Meghalaya.
The letter was sent to the PM through Bharatiya Janata Party state president Ernest Mawrie.
In it, HITO called for a special committee to implement the Annexed Agreement signed between the Union of India and erstwhile Khasi states in 1948.
The pressure group called for 10 seats in the Khasi and Jaiñtia Hills Autonomous District Councils (KHADC and JHADC) to be reserved for Syiems, Lyngdohs, Sirdars, Wahadars and Dollois) to be elected among themselves as nominated members to the two councils for terms of two years.
HITO also said that there is a need for de-politicisation and/or barring political parties recognized by the Election Commission from the district councils, saying that, in 2018, 26 out of the 30 MDCs in the KHADC contested that year’s state Assembly elections.
This leads to “a huge vacuum in the administration of the KHADC”. Special assistance schemes from the Centre for villages also wind up benefitting those linked politically.
The MDCs give little time to meaningful debate, discussion and studying their own legislation, the pressure group added, saying that council sessions are sometimes reduced to just two days.
The organization also said that the delay for decades in providing quality legislation for the dorbar shnongs, dorbar raids, and dorbar hima/elaka in delivery of basic civic governance led to the recent agitation due to the lack of garbage dumping locations, causing serious threats to the environment.
