Mylliem MDC Ronnie V Lyngdoh has reiterated that he fails to understand why Union Home Minister Amit Shah has to come to Meghalaya if he wants to give the state the Inner Line Permit (ILP).
“Does a Union Minister need to come to every state capital for implementation of certain issues and laws of that particular state?” he asked.
Stating that if the central government can do away with Article 370 and 35A of the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir and only send a paramilitary force to ensure that there are no uprisings, he said, “If the government of India has the political will and real concern about the Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo people it can consult the matter with the Home Ministry and concern officers and implement the ILP accordingly in Meghalaya from Delhi and don’t need to be physically present.”
Questioning if Shah had visited Manipur before ILP was implemented there, he said, “Politically the fact is that we do not matter to them because we sent only two MPs in the Lok Sabha which make no difference to the RSS and the BJP.”
Lyngdoh was reacting to the scheduled visit of Shah later this month and the audience wanted by many stakeholders to meet him on ILP.
He wondered why, if the National People’s Party-led government is part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in Delhi and North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) in the North East, there is a problem for the state government to get Shah to agree to ILP.
He further said that it is high time that the people of Meghalaya also realize that besides laws to protect them they also need to be economically powerful and not depend on everything imported from outside the state.
“Why would the outsiders come if they have no opportunity to earn here and if all the opportunities are provided and owned by the indigenous people of the state,” he said the people of the state have to think of other ways and means to compete economically, business-wise, trade and commerce, etc.
“The problem now is that there is too much opportunity here and these people will still try to circumvent all the laws and enter the state but they will not if there are no opportunities at all,” he added.
