Shillong, Aug 9: Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assured to examine issues related to Inner Line Permit (ILP), inclusion of Khasi and Garo languages and others raised by the cabinet delegation during its visit to New Delhi.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Sangma said, “We have discussed and updated him regarding the discussions going on the border talks and the PM expressed his concerns about the different incidents that keep taking place and why within a country these matters cannot be resolved. He was very appreciative of the leadership in the North East for having taken the initiatives and he said that these are very difficult challenges but yet the leadership in the different states are now taking this up. He has expressed a lot of happiness in that and he assured all support from the government side.”
On the talks with the HNLC, the PM was very keen that there should be long lasting peace in the state of Meghalaya and asked the state government to move forward in this issue and try to resolve it at the earliest.
Sangma said the state delegation also put forth the desire of the people of the state for the inclusion of Garo and Khasi languages in the Eighth Schedule.
‘:”And for that also he understood the concerns that were there, understood the challenges that our people are facing. We mention to them out of the entire process the fact that our children sometimes are not able to give the examinations because there are languages which are not known to them, those languages come up and this puts a lot of challenges. So even if provisions can be created where atleast in the examination for starting point, we could have some kind of provisions up to that level also we discussed with the PM. He said that yes, these are genuine concerns but he expressed the challenges in terms of languages having different scripts that are there and having to manage all of that. So those challenges were there but he definitely expressed his concern about this issue and he said definitely he will examine it.”
On the ILP demand, the chief minister said that the state delegation had expressed before the PM the desire of the people of the state to have a mechanism in the state.
“We could have provisions through which we could protect the interest of the people of the state and hence, expressed that ILP is one of the ways we could do it”’.
“We have tried through MRSSA also. We explained to him about MRSSA also and he gave us a very patient hearing and he understood the concerns of the people of the North East and he also has said that he would examine the matter and he will be in touch with the state government and he will have a discussion with the home ministry also,” he added.
