State Govt seeks public suggestions
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, July 27 2015: Urging all the educated people, the Constitutional experts, legal experts and learned people of the land to contribute whatever suggestions they can towards darfting a Bill to save the indigenous people of the land, the State Government has asked everyone to submit their written suggestions within August 2 to [email protected] and [email protected] .

Seeking co-operation of all the people, including those residing outside Manipur, the State Government said that the opinion of the people has been sought in the backdrop of the demands put up by the Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit System to include the five points, which they had submitted to the Government earlier, in the new Bill.

The five points mentioned by the JCILPS in an earlier intimation to the Government to effect certain modifications in the Manipur Regulation of Visitors and Tenants Bill, 2015 are; 1) In the title of the Bill, the word 'Visitor' is vague and innocuous, the JCILPS firmly demands a suitable terminology 'Non-indigenous' or 'Non-Manipuri' or 'Migrants' in lieu of 'Visitors' .

2) That JCILPS feels that the passing of the Bill in the proposed draft would legitimise the presence of people who had earlier resided in Manipur since 1959, and the JCILPS had demanded a cut off base year of 1951 as an unavoidable component in the proposed legislation in order to mitigate demographic and socio-economic imbalances developing in the multi-ethnic population of Manipur.

3) That, a clear objective in the Bill for protection of the indigenous peoples of Manipur and its land out of demographic imbalance must be mentioned in the Government's Draft Bill.

4) That, the objective then should be 'The necessity to protect the minorities and ethnic Manipuris who deserve their rightful preservation such as social, cultural, economic and political practices etc, should be mentioned and necessary actions must be taken up by the Government' .

5) That, the indigenous peoples in the context of Manipur be inserted in the Bill as the ethnic communities who had been born in the State along with those who had merged into the population through kinship and through sharing of its socio-economic, cultural and multi-ethnic civilisation of the State.

6) That the JCILPS demands the further inclusion of the following .

a) A permit or a pass for migrants as regards their purpose, whereabouts and validity etc, of their presence.

b) A cut-off base year of 1951 to all people participating and creating of demographic influx into the State.

c) No land ownership rights are to be given to all non-indigenous people and procedures be included in the preparation of the Bill proposed.

d) A full fledged Labour Department with outreach in all the districts of Manipur be strengthened in operational matters for registration and regulation of inter-State migrant labourers and its necessary rules be framed .

e) Detection and deportation of illegal migrants or other non-indigenous peoples should be included in the proposed Bill and necessary action taken thereof.

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