Govt-JCILPS negotiation : 4th round meeting goes on till late night
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, August 25 2015: The fourth round of meeting between JCILPS and the State Government which started at 4.30 this afternoon dragged on and remained inconclusive till 11.45 pm.

The JCILPS was represented by 14 representatives while the State Government's team was headed by Chief Minister O Ibobi and Deputy Chief Minister Gaikhangam.

Even though the two sides have agreed in principle to incorporate the five points suggested by JCILPS in the proposed draft Bill, it appears there are certain differences on some finer points of the Bill.

Notably, after the State Government and JCILPS achieved a major breakthrough and issued a joint statement to the media on August 19, a public meeting was held on the next day at MDU Hall.

The meeting adopted 10 different resolutions.

It resolved that "private undertaking" and "local authority" inserted in relation to persons to be exempted under Section 8(2) of the proposed draft Bill No 1 must be removed.

The convention resolved that the electoral roll of 1948, Census report of 1951 and the Village Directory of 1951 should be adopted as referral documents under Section 2(b) of the proposed draft Bill No 1 (Protection of Manipur Peoples Bill, 2015) .

The convention reaffirmed that all the five points suggested by the Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit System should be incorporated in the new Bill.

The convention resolved to insert 'non-Manipuri peoples firm, institutions or any other similar entities' within the definition of non-permanent resident as elaborated by Section 14(a) of the proposed draft Bill No 2 (MLR&LR 7th Amendment Bill) .

The fifth resolution said that no non-indigenous people should be given land ownership right in Manipur.

To ask the Government to provide a copy of the proposed amendment draft Bill of the Labour Act was the sixth resolution.

Replacement of Section 2(i) of the proposed draft Bill No 1 by the sentence "Non-Manipuri persons means those citizens of India who is not covered by Section 2(b) of this Act" was the seventh resolution.

Consultation of JCILPS as people's representatives by the Government in framing rules and regulations as and when the draft Bill No 1 becomes an Act was the eighth resolution.

The ninth resolution was about constitution of a Manipur State Population Commission or an expert committee and presentation of a white paper by the State Government on the population of non-local people in Manipur and its growth trend over the years.

The tenth and last resolution of the 2nd People's Convention was formulation of Manipur State Population Policy based on the white paper.

Although the Government and JCILPS was scheduled to held a meeting on August 20 itself, JCILPS representatives could not make it to the meeting as the second People's Convention ended quite late.

Since then there was no meeting between the two sides until they held at meeting today which remained inclusive till the time of filing this report.

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