People in positions of power used inside knowledge to buy up vast tracts of land in what is now the New Shillong Township on the cheap before it was publicly known that the area would undergo massive development.
This enabled those who had bought the land cheaply to see its value rise astronomically when the state government began purchasing land to develop the NST. This was stated by opposition MLA Ardent M Basaiawmoit in the Assembly today.
Participating in a discussion on land alienation within the state and its impact on the tribals of Meghalaya, Basaiawmoit referred to conversations about the inside knowledge that has profited a few well-connected tribals at the expense of the original landowners who were paid a pittance.
Stating that a tribal without a land is as good as dead, the Nongkrem legislator said that lands are being transferred from tribal to tribal to facilitate the use of land by non-tribals.
Earlier, Nongstoin MLA Gabriel Wahlang of the opposition Congress Party lamented that many mining leases are being granted to non-tribal owned companies, with tribals leasing their land out to them.
Asking the government to come up with a policy to screen such leases, he called for immediate action on the matter.
Umsning MLA Dr Celestine Lyngdoh, also a Congressman, gave a historical context to the warning of domination by outsiders – the British, he said, came to India first in the form of a commercial enterprise, the East India Company, but they then ended up ruling India for 200 years.
In his reply, Revenue Minister Kyrmen Shylla said that Meghalaya’s land transfer act follows stringent rules that prevent land being transferred to non-tribals.
