It does seem the contentious issue of the introduction of the Inner Line permit system in Manipur is unlikely to end soon. The government has indicated that it will not be able to keep the deadline of a month it set itself to come up with a Bill to the effect and moreover, it has also made it known that there are two clauses amongst the five demands submitted by the JCILPS which are proving thorny. Although these clauses have not been made public, it is reasonable to guess one of these is Clause-2, which has to do with the cut off year of 1951 set to define non-domiciles. The other probably is Clause-5, regarding detection and deportation of illegal migrants and non-indigenous people. The other three, that of issue of permits to migrants; prohibition of sale of landed properties to non-domiciles; and creation of a full-fledged labour department to monitor migrants, should not face much legal hurdles, provided they are approached imaginatively and compassionately.
Our guess is informed by recent history on similar problems faced by Assam during its `Anti-Foreigners Agitation` of the late 1970s and early 1980s, where amongst the many demands of the agitators, the issue of 1951 as cut off year as well as detection and deportation of foreigners, proved impossible to resolve legally. These two clauses are also very closely related and indeed intertwined inseparably. In the Assam case, the cut off year was finally raised to 1971, but even this proved impossible. The question was, and still is, how do you declare as illegal somebody who has voted in an Indian election and therefore had been a fundamental instrument in the constitution of India`™s most important democratic institutions of the Parliament and Assemblies. We do hope there is light at the end of the tunnel, and in the spirit of give and take, the issue is resolved. From our standpoint, we would think that Clause-3, which prohibits land ownership transfers to outsiders is the most important, and ensuring this would resolve most of the others on its own. We need not look any further than our own hill districts which do not share the immigrant worries because hill lands are protected.
If the Assam Agitation is a lesson on the matter, there is also much to learn from the direction the Naga peace negotiation is heading currently. Ostensibly the two most contentious demands, that of sovereignty and integration of Naga territory have been dropped. Unlike what some commentators have claimed, neither of these happened long ago. In a recent interaction, the interlocutor of the negotiation, R.N. Ravi, confirmed it was only in February this year something on the line was agreed upon. Before this date, when the government made its position known that these two were not negotiable, the NSCN(IM) had broken off from the talks, and the negotiations were stalemated on these issues for almost the whole of last year. The words `Indian Constitution` is not mentioned even in the recent `framework agreement`, but in spirit this was amply implied when the consensus was to work for a solution within the `flexible and accommodative framework of the Indian system`. This message was always clear. Union joint secretary home in charge of Northeast, Sambhu Singh, had spelled it out in another situation in a televised interview while the agitation for `Alternative Arrangement` was in full swing. When the interviewer (Vision TV) told him of the threat of the agitators they would not allow government developmental projects in their area, all he said was no government employee would lose his job or salary while the trouble lasted, and only the earmarked development works would suffer.
What the ILPS agitators must keep in mind is, beyond a limit, the Union government can simply turn away. It does not hurt New Delhi that the Imphal streets are burning. As we have seen, even the national media will not keep its focus on the state for long. We must push the matter, which undoubtedly spawns from a very legitimate concern, to the very limit, but we must also know where this limit is, for beyond this limit, we will only be running against a wall. The Assam Agitation and the NSCN(IM) peace talks have demonstrated this loudly before our very eyes.
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam
Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2015/08/the-exile-and-the-kingdom/