Pressure groups want to meet Shah over ILP, 8th Schedule
Union Home Minister likely to visit Shillong
Shillong, Nov 3: The leaders of the five pressure groups who met Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong on Thursday said they would meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah over delay in granting inner line permit to Meghalaya as well as 8th Schedule status to the Khasi language.
Shah is likely to visit Shillong soon.
HYC president Robertjune Kharjahrin told mediapersons after the meeting that Tynsong informed the delegation that Shah “may visit Shillong in a couple of weeks”.
Questioning the Centre’s dilly-dally on ILP, Kharjahrin said, “We have accordingly expressed that we would like to have an audience with Amit Shah during his visit to Shillong and we would also like to see all the 60 MLAs go and directly ask (Shah) what is the position of the two resolutions and why it (Centre) is keeping mum and taking so much time to grant these demands which have been long pending aspirations of the people of the state.”
Citing Manipur’s example, he said the Centre took 2-3 months to review the situation but it is showing “step-motherly” attitude to Meghalaya.
Stating that it is a mistake to say only tribal commit violence against non-tribal, HYC chief said, “Let’s go to history. It is a fact no one can deny it. Let us call a spade a spade. Can you deny that a non-tribal also is killing tribal in Meghalaya – we don’t want to continue that and it is high time for the union government to bring peace in our state by granting ILP.”
“We have been living together with a lot of non-tribal but we don’t want to see the population of non-tribal keep increasing in the state. This has to end once and for all in order to ensure there is peace and harmony in the state,” he added.
Demanding the government to immediately relocate the 342 families of Harijan Colony from Them Iew Mawlong, Kharjahrin said, “We have demanded that only legal settlers, which means the employees of the various departments, should be relocated while others should be evicted.”
On Wednesday, Tynsong pointed out that the 342 families were not illegal as they have all the documents.
He said the deputy chief minister assured that the government would wait for a few weeks before taking other steps.
On the issue of corruption, the HYC chief said that the deputy chief minister informed the delegation that the political department had already circulated the reports of the different inquiries to all the MLAs.
“We have demanded that the reports should be uploaded in the public domain,” he said.
Meanwhile, the five pressure groups also demanded the government to resolve the boundary dispute with Assam at the earliest.
