The state government deceived pressure groups and the public over the Inner Line Permit (ILP) as it never had any real intention of implementing it in Meghalaya, Voice of the People Party (VPP) president an Nongkrem MLA Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit said today.
The state Assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling on the central government to introduce ILP to Meghalaya in December 2019. This was at the height of often violent agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act and MLAs were under intense pressure to pass the resolution, which explains how members of the governing benches and the opposition, including members who had previously opposed ILP, voted for the resolution.
Passing the resolution calmed tempers on the street but the issue has smouldered ever since, raked up every so often by pressure groups, which are reminded by the state government that the matter is in the hands of the Centre.
Today Basaiawmoit, who was not an MLA back then, said that the 2019 resolution was part of a deception by the state government.
“The MDA government passed the resolution on ILP not with the objective to implement it but to rid itself from the issue,” the VPP chief said.
Around that same time, the words Khasi-Jaintia were removed from the preamble of the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, the legal basis for ILP. Basaiawmoit questioned why the state government, if it is serious about the ILP, does not demand that the central government reverse the removal.
The government does not really want ILP because it has a “mainstream” mindset, he added.
“In them I do not see being worried about the indigenous people, maybe because they were raised in an environment outside the state. Therefore they will not understand the need for laws to protect us,” Basaiawmoit asserted.
He also said that when Conrad K Sangma took charge as Chief Minister, he had said at the time, “let us not talk about ILP”.
