SHILLONG:
Voice of the People Party (VPP) president Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit, on February 20, said that the government was not sincere with regard to the implementation of Inner Line Permit (ILP).
Basaiawmoit, who is also the party candidate from Nongkrem, was speaking at the release of 34 election pledges covering education, power, land, health etc and maintained that the party will pursue the issues whether they are in the government or in the opposition.
Recalling the time when the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly in 2019 adopted a resolution to implement the ILP in the state, Basaiawmoit said, “Passing the resolution was an attempt to pacify the agitating youth of the state. There was no serious attempt to implement ILP in the state.”
He said that the state government should have pushed the Centre to withdraw the presidential order whereby they removed the word Khasi-Jaintia from the preamble to the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation Act, 1873.
Basaiawmoit also asked the political parties not to mislead the people about the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution of India.
He said that it is ironic for political parties who are contesting the assembly elections to say that the Sixth Schedule is enough to protect the indigenous people.
“If they feel that the Sixth Schedule is enough, they should have forgotten about the legislative assembly, they should be confined to the district council only. I think it is not proper on the part of those who would like to lead the state to mislead the people about the power of the district council,” he said.
He said the Sixth Schedule is a provision for the administration in the tribal areas adding “the state government covers the entire state not only the tribal areas and there is a difference between the law passed by the district council and the law passed by the state legislature.”
“We should not forget that there is no provision in the Sixth Schedule as far as protection of land is concerned,” he said.
“Had the Meghalaya Transfer of Land Regulation Act not been there, all the land would have been slipping away to other non-indigenous people,” he added..
Referring to the freebies offered by other political parties, Basaiawmoit said that his party believes in what the old Chinese proverb which says “if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, if you teach a man to fish you feed him for his entire life”.
“So we prefer to uplift the economic condition of the people of the state. Once we uplift the economic condition of the people of the state, every household will be benefited and the people need not depend on these freebies offered by the political parties,” he asserted.