Shillong: It is a drill the non-tribal business owners in Shillong — Meghalaya’s capital and economic power centre — have become accustomed to over the years: young men affiliated with various pressure groups come knocking, unannounced, during work hours, seeking “cuts and commissions”.
However, a steady rise in such incidents over the past few weeks has stoked anxiety among the city’s non-tribal communities that it could mean a return to the state’s violent past.
“There are nearly a dozen such groups. We pay them in cash. At times, they take away goods, without paying of course. Every non-tribal trader considers it a way of buying peace,” said the owner of a garment shop in the heart of Shillong who did not wish to be identified for fear of reprisals.
Most of these businesses are run by families who have experienced the violent decades of the late seventies and the early nineties when Meghalaya witnessed a similar campaign against outsiders. In its report, the B.N. Sharma Commission, set up in 1992, had documented the hundreds of killings and displacements of non-tribals in Shillong.
“No business can be set up without paying a cut to these groups. No infrastructure project can be executed either. But we know better than to draw attention,” said another trader in the Laitumkhrah neighbourhood in Shillong which still retains a multi-ethnic character, unlike localities such as Mawlai, where Khasis are numerically dominant.
KSU ‘inspection drives’
Over the past few weeks, at least six such incidents were reported in Shillong between 6 July and 18 July.
In particular, the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU), among the most influential pressure groups in Meghalaya, has suddenly gone into overdrive.
The group, set up in 1978, has by its own admission been carrying out “inspection drives” to identify non-residents who don’t have work permits; setting up checkpoints at the borders; and demanding the implementation of the Inner Line Permit (ILP).
The ILP is an entry pass issued by the governments of Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur to people entering the states, considered protected areas.
Members of the KSU are under the scanner for allegedly assaulting labourers from other states, forcing many of them to leave Meghalaya.
“We were at work the other day when these people came and lined us up. One of them asked me to step forward. The moment I asked if I had done something wrong, I was slapped. I am never returning to such hostile work conditions,” said a technician, hailing from Delhi, who was working on the renovations at the city’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium ahead of the Durand Cup football tournament beginning next week.
The police have sent notices to many KSU members under clause 3, Section 35, of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), a senior police official of the East Khasi Hills District, which covers Shillong, told ThePrint. The police also filed at least 10 first information reports (FIRs) to date, but it has yet to make any arrests.
“The contractors have also been directed to ensure that the workers they are bringing in are registered. It’s a five-minute process through a website created for this purpose, unlike the cumbersome procedure of the past. When it comes to arrests and a more aggressive approach, it’s a political call,” said the police official on condition of anonymity.
Also read: BJP’s allies in Northeast to push for 6th Schedule amendment to empower tribal autonomous councils
Pressure on NPP-led ruling coalition
The intensification of the so-called pro-ILP and anti-outsider drive in Meghalaya has come at a time when the National People’s Party (NPP), which leads the ruling alliance, has its back against the wall, having lost both Lok Sabha seats in the state in the 4 June elections.
The KSU drive has also coincided with the demand from Khasi-Jaintia groups, who, according to the 2011 census, make up 47 percent of the state’s population, to enhance the reservations for them in state government jobs, reviewing the existing policy of 40 percent reservation each for Khasi-Jaintias and Garos.
The rise of the Voice of the People Party (VPP), led by popular leader Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit, who appears to have captured the imagination of a sizeable section of the Khasi community, especially the youth, has particularly set alarm bells ringing for the NPP.
The VPP candidate won the Shillong Lok Sabha seat, defeating the Congress and NPP candidates by a margin of 371,910 and 384,590 votes respectively. The Congress won the other seat of Tura with a margin of 155,241 votes over the NPP candidate.
“Meghalaya Chief Minister and NPP president Conrad Sangma never took a hardline position on these issues. But he’s in a situation where he cannot afford to antagonise the Khasis. That explains the relatively free run that these pressure groups are having now,” said a leader of the Meghalaya BJP who did not wish to be named.
Ardent told ThePrint that the argument that the state cannot implement the ILP unless the central government issues a notification has come up solely because it dropped the words Khasi and Jaintia from the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, in 2020.
“The NPP, being an NDA ally, should have opposed it instead of using it as a convenient excuse to brush its hands off the issue of ILP,” Ardent said, terming a resolution demanding ILP, moved by the NPP and passed by the Meghalaya assembly in 2019, as an “eyewash”.
“We understand that we cannot live in isolation but we need to address the anxiety and threats facing the indigenous people. The fact that the pressure groups had to take it upon themselves only reflects the failure of the state in checking the unregulated flow of outsiders,” Ardent said.
On Friday, Sangma held a meeting with a delegation of the KSU at the state secretariat.
He, however, failed to convince the KSU to stop its “inspection drives” in markets and on the streets. The student body vowed to continue to identify and deport outsiders with no “work permit” despite Sangma pointing out during the meeting that professionals from other states do not officially require any such permit in Meghalaya.
“There’s nothing called a work permit. There is no provision in the Central Act or the State Act for anything called a ‘work permit’. There is a need for registration but it’s not legitimate (on the part of pressure groups) to check these registrations,” Sangma had told ThePrint in an interview Friday.
Workers from other states are registered under the Meghalaya Identification, Registration (Safety & Security) of Migrant Workers Rules, 2020, which flows from the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979.
While the central act requires registration only in case a trader is employing more than five people from other states, the state rules make it compulsory even if there is one non-resident employee.
The Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act (MRSSA), 2016, which regulates tenants, is also being enforced in the state. The state tried to make it more stringent in 2020 by making registrations mandatory even for visitors, but the central government returned the amendments citing a potential violation of Article 19 of the Constitution. The state government counters the contention and has clarified as such to the Centre, Sangma said.
Implementation of both the ILP and MRSSA amendments is currently pending approval of the central government.
Sangma, who belongs to the Garo community, told ThePrint that he has raised the issue of ILP with Union Home Minister Amit Shah “six to seven times” and that the central government is examining the proposal. He added that Shah had said the concerns of the state’s pressure groups are legitimate.
“Is there a concern over the issue of illegal immigration or foreigners coming in and working in the state and we not being able to check? Yes, of course, it is a genuine issue that we need to check and that’s the reason why we have put up laws in our own state, which looks to do that. Under our investment policy, to get incentives one needs to ensure that at least 90 percent of the non-managerial staff are made up of locals,” Sangma said.
KSU calls for stricter rules
However, KSU general secretary Donald Thabah told ThePrint last Friday that even the 2020 rules are too lenient and allow big contractors to get away by paying the “paltry” sum of Rs 5,000 for employing unregistered workers.
“The act has several loopholes. It has removed the need for police verification, like in the case of passports. Also, the penalty for violations needs to be enhanced. Meghalaya has a Sixth Schedule in place but it needs the shield of the ILP,” Thabah said, referring to the provisions of the Constitution related to the administration of tribal areas.
Speaking to ThePrint, KSU president Lambok S Marngar claimed last Tuesday that the union has pushed back at least 2,500 workers from other states since 6 July, when it began the “inspection drives” — which he described as an essential part of a “democratic movement to wake the government up”.
“If you look at history, in Assam, indigenous communities are already under threat. Meghalaya could be next. So we are very concerned. They might mislead you saying non-Khasis are targeted by the KSU. It’s not true. But we have a situation where have come across people not even holding voter ID cards. They can very well be foreign nationals. We don’t want Khasis to be outnumbered in their own state,” Marngar said.
In the 1980s — particularly between 1985-87 — a similar KSU campaign, fuelled by Khasi sub-nationalism, employed similar anti-outsider rhetoric, leading to hundreds of deaths and thousands of displacements.
The KSU slogan at the time was “No Detection, No Election” and inspired a wave of violence so immense that a curfew was in force for months and the army was pressed into service.
The then Congress government, led by Williamson Sangma, later faced criticism for not dealing with the issue more firmly in what appeared to be a bid to avoid hurting tribal sentiments — an approach that the NPP-led coalition appears to have adopted.
Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, however, denied suggestions that the state government was soft on pressure groups.
“Ten cases have been filed against different organisations and individuals and many of them have been picked up. On Thursday, there was an incident where they tried to enter but the police were very forceful. Therefore the police is doing its part and definitely, there’s a lot of action being taken,” he said.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
Also read: ‘Meghalaya’s Kejriwal’: All about Ardent Basaiawmoit & party VPP, in spotlight after Shillong win