New Delhi, May 8: Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has assured today the delegation of North East Students Organisation (NESO) that the Ministry for Development of the North Eastern Region (DoNER) will not be abolished.
NESO delegation team comprising NESO Chairman, Samuel B Jyrwa from Meghalaya, Secretary General, Sinam Prakash Singh from Manipur, other office bearers of NESO and members units of NESO met with Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh in his Office Chamber at Parliament, New Delhi and submitted a memorandum on the various important issues affecting the North East region as a whole and also a Representation on the issue relating to the Minister of DoNER. During the meeting, the Charter of Demands made by NESO were discussed minutely. The Prime Minister said that he will go through the Memorandum carefully and will see what could be done from his side.
Apart from the charter of demands in the Memorandum, NESO also submitted a representation regarding the Minister of DoNER. NESO urged the Prime Minister that instead of dissolution of Minister of DoNER, restructuring of DoNER could be done so as to bring more development in the NE. In this regard, the Prime Minister gave assurance that Minister of DoNER will not be dissolved.
Moreover, NESO team will be meeting with opposition leaders and other Central leaders during its visit to New Delhi.
It was stated that NE that in more than five decades, the Union Republic of free India has not addressed itself to the genuine problem of the NE except some reactive and luring approaches, conditioned only to when the national security of the so-called, the mainstream India, is threatened by insurgency or external aggression.
The successive Indian government has carried out a ceaseless psychological warfare against the people in an attempt to divide and rule us. Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act of 1958 (AFSPA) is one of the most draconian legislations that the Indian Parliament has passed in its 54 years of parliamentary history, that for nearly 50 years the deployment of armed forces and militarisation of the NE has been the single largest threat to the indigenous people in terms of atrocities on innocent populace, occupation of educational institutions, lands in cities and villages, using forests as training grounds and thereby, usurping the resources of indigenous people. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 and other anti-peoples’ laws has given the security forces in NE with the power over life and death of the citizens with a status of impunity. Innocent civilians, aged, children, women and people from all walks of life have been put into nightmarish reign of terror. Even the babies of the next generation will turned out to be traumatized and mentally retarded children because the NE had been kept under the spell of nightmares and ghostly scenes for more than 40 years.
It demanded that the Union government accede and honour the United Nations Covenants for guarantee of Human Rights, repeal, all impunitive legislations and draconian laws .
The present problem facing the northeast is multi-dimensional but a great part of the crisis relates with the unabated influx of illegal migrants from her immediate neighbours which has brought a serious demographic change m the N.E. region in particular and other parts of the country in general.
The continued influx of refugees and undocumented migrants from different countries has created a sense of insecurity and apprehension among the indigenous people that their culture, tradition, political identity, their creeping control over land and existence itself, will be swallowed up by the outsiders. The unguarded porous border has been used by fundamentalist groups to infiltrate into the region thereby further threatening the existence of the indigenous people. There is every reason to believe that there are already a considerable number of militant fundamentalist groups operating in NE with a design to over-run the whole of NE according to their whims and fancies.
In order to protect the indigenous people of the NE from further assimilation by dominant communities and their culture, the provisions of the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873 popularly known as the ‘Inner Line Permit’ system must be extended to the entire north Eastern region.
It is a matter of great pain to mention that, ever since India’s independence from the British yoke, NE region has always remained backward. The mainland rulers of the country have neglected the NE part of the country and untold political injustice and economic exploitation has been perpetrated on the region and its people. The sheer discrimination to the people of NE has reared its ugly head in different forms, both non-violent peaceful movements and violent armed movements. There is an unabated growth of frustrated un-employed youths and their number is growing in an alarming proportion. Although, there are certain armed political movements, which have historical bases, yet, the feeling of total alienation from the mainland India is also manifested in many ways amongst the people of NE.
The magnanimity of the above-mentioned problems has become deep-rooted and there can be no short cut to solving the problem. This problem is, whether, deliberately, or otherwise, the creation of the Central rulers and the NESO is strongly of the view that the only solution to this decades- concentrated problem has to be constitutional addressed. Therefore, the NESO demand for granting of Special Constitutional Status to the people of NE states that must delegate vast federal authority to the states governments including the rights over land and its natural resources.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/doner-will-not-be-abolished-pm/
