JCILPS against adding non-locals in voters' list
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, September 23 2019: Cautioning against the inclusion of any non-indigenous people in updating the electoral rolls, JCILPS has opined that it is of utmost importance to identify the areas of the State which are mainly populated by the non-indigenous people and to take up necessary precautionary measures before the electoral rolls are updated.

A statement issued by the convenor of JCILPS today mentioned that the rapid and unchecked influx of non-indigenous people, even from countries like Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar, have been causing untold suffering and negative impact to the indigenous people of the region.

It continued that the non-indigenous people have started taking control of the economy of the State and now they are slowly but surely starting to impact on the administration of the State as well.

Reminding that in the past, JCILPS had pointed out some ACs of the State where many non-locals were included in the voters list, JCILPS said all the officials, supervisors, BLOs, Election Commission officials etc working on enumeration, need to be honest and sincere in their duties.

Even if there were errors in the past electoral rolls, the said errors should be corrected after reverification and the names of the non-indigenous people should be removed from the voter lists and instead they should be given their voting rights in their own land or place of origin, it stated.

JCILPS urged the officials working on updating the electoral rolls, not to buckle under pressure from any politician or political parties, and also cautioned against finishing the verification works by just casually checking a single document.

Demanding the authorities concerned to update the electoral rolls on the basis of the agreements reached between JCILPS and the Government, it urged against updating the electoral rolls based on Aadhaar cards.

JCILPS further urged all politicians and political parties from including the non-indigenous people on the elector lists for vote bank politics.

It then appealed to all concerned against issuing residential certificate/permanent residential certificate unethically for some quick money.

JCILPS also demanded the Govenrment to honour the agreement signed between it (Govt) and AMSU in 1980 and 1998 as well as with the JCILPS in 2015 to set the base year as 1951 for identifying the non-indigenous people and to update the elector lists based on this data.

It then appealed to all the CSOs, clubs, Meira Paibis and the people to work together to ensure that the electoral rolls are updated sincerely.

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