Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma today said the Citizenship (Amendment) Act will not have any impact in Meghalaya since the sixth schedule areas have been exempted from its purview.
“From Meghalaya’s point of view, it (CAA) doesn’t really impact us much because the Sixth Schedule areas are completely exempted from the CAA and hardly we say 99.9 per cent but it is actually 99.9999 per cent. Only a small section is a non-scheduled area in the state. The entire Sixth Schedule area has been exempted so it will not have any impact on the state of Meghalaya,” Sangma told reporters.
Asked if the state government will continue to pursue with the Centre to fully exempt Meghalaya from the CAA, Sangma said, “There is hardly municipal area of 2-3 or this entire European ward of 2 sq km or 1sq km or whatever it is really not a big impact as the entire of the state is exempted from it”.
“I think we are looking at that one dot which is there and not realising that the rest of 99.9999 per cent is not included, that is what is important to note. That one dot is there because of a technical issue otherwise the entire Sixth Schedule area is exempted from the CAA,” he added.
However, the North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) contended that since Assam has not been exempted from the purview of the Act, the other states in the region will be affected slowly.
NESO chairman, Samuel B Jyrwa said the Sixth Schedule does not talk about migration and does not have any power to regulate migration.
“The power to regulate migration is with the state government and the central government. The Meghalaya government has enacted the MRSSA (Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act) which the High Court has stayed its implementation and the central government has not granted implementation of the ILP, that is why we are against implementation of the CAA,” he said.
Earlier, NESO and its constituent, the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) burnt the rules of the Act to express its opposition in the city today.
Jyrwa said the Act is against the interest of the indigenous people of the region. “By giving citizenship to the people who have entered illegally mainly through Bangladesh the government of India is giving them citizenship which is against our interest,” he said.
He said that the region and the state is already overburdened with influx right from 1947 in the different states of the north eastern region and it cannot bear this burden anymore.
The NESO chairman said that the indigenous people of the region are becoming minorities in their own land and Tripura and Assam are examples.
“This CAA will only add to that burden in the different states of the north east,” Jyrwa said.
He said that the NESO has been opposing the CAA since 2016 and it will keep on opposing it. “Since the passage of the Act in December 2019, we thought that the GOI after four years will address our genuine concerns and apprehensions of the people of the region, but instead it went ahead notifying the rules,” Jyrwa said.
He said that the NESO wants to send a message to the government of India that this step motherly attitude of the centre will only hurt the indigenous people of the region.
