Semir on tiol integration, indigenous rights organized

A Reporter

SHILLONG, April 8: The Hynniewtrep tiol Youth Front (HNYF) on Friday as part of its 20th anniversary celebration organized a semir on ‘tiol Integration and The Rights of Indigenous people’ at the Khasi tiol Dorbar Hall Mawkhar.

Speaking at the semir on the topic ‘The Letter and Spirit of the Instrument of Accession (IOA), our willing accession to the Union of India’- Its deprivation, Erwin K Sutnga chairman of the Movement of Indigenous Peoples Rights and livelihood (MIPRL) said, “Meghalaya is not a tribal state unlike Mizoram which is a full-fledged tribal state since it has clearly state that no laws of the parliament shall apply in the state of Mizoram, however when it comes to Meghalaya we have Para 12 A (b) which states that laws of parliament shall not apply unless modification is needed as deem fit by the President of India.”

“If you look at the conflict between the Distinct Council and the state government in our state  it shows that the reason the conflict even started is because the is an anomaly in the constitution,” he said.

He said the leaders who are sitting in the chair of power should be blamed since they are not taking any initiative despite many laws are being passed.

Earlier, Prof Sumarbin Umdor from NEHU while speaking on the topic ‘Integration through Development’ said, “In a country like India where we have diverse languages, culture and religion we need to have an emotiol and sociological integration and if we don’t have this then we will not be able to stand as one.”

In his observation Bangladesh is concentrating more on uplifting female literacy rate in its country when compared with India.

He said the tragedy of the country is since if there is any kind of development it stays within a particular state and does not flow towards other state.

“We are also very privileged that since we belong to the Scheduled Tribes (ST) we don’t have to pay taxes and I feel we have really been taken care of by this country,” he said.