Inner line Permit issue needs resolution soon
Festering for more than several months now, the Inner line Permit issue in Manipur has expectedly flared up again, in the run-up to the municipal council election in Imphal, scheduled for June 2. This past weekend, the Joint Committee on Inner line Permit System, the citizen's group spearheading the demand for the IlPS in the State, imposed a 42-hour-long public curfew, which was lifted Sunday evening, though the law and order situation in the State remains tense. At the crux of the JCIlPS's agitation is the set of three Bills that was passed by the Manipur Assembly in August 2015, effectively realising the demand for an IlPS in the State.
More than eight months later, these Bills are, however, yet to be signed into law by the President. The JCIlPS is demanding that the Union Government be pressured into advising the President to give his assent to the Bills and bring them into force. In this, it has the support of almost every major political party in the State. The committee also wants a population commission to study the State's demographics and a land reforms panel.
The Union Government, on its part, has maintained a studied silence on the issue because it believes that the IlPS violates the spirit of Article 19 of the Constitution of India. Currently, the IlPS is active in Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, where Indian citizens who are not permanent residents of these States need special travel documents to visit and/or work in restricted areas, primarily inhabited by ‘indigenous' communities. For some time now, civil society groups in Manipur and Meghalaya have been demanding that the IlPS also be introduced in their States to protect the locals (although there is no guarantee that the IlPS is a fool-proof system; migrant population in Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram has grown despite the IlPS).
The problem in Manipur is that even the definition of ‘locals' is vague and contested. Moreover, not all ‘locals' agree that the IlPS is in their interests. The tribal communities that mostly live in the hills feel are strongly opposed to the IlPS, which they believe will disenfranchise them from their land. They see the system as benefitting the plainspeople who are mostly from the Meitei community and make up Manipur's political elite. In fact, the United Naga Council has termed the three bills as ‘anti-tribal'. The Government of Manipur has been trying to find a middle path that appeases all stakeholders but somehow hasn't been able to bring everybody on the same page. Before the set of three Bills were passed in August 2015, another Bill, also regulating the presence of outsiders in the State, was passed by the Assembly in March but withdrawn in July 2015. This kind of one-step-forward-two-step-backward policy has only added fuel to the combustible mix of old ethnic politics, unresolved sub-nationalist tendencies, and land-grab fears that underline the IlPS controversy. The ball is in the Union Government's court.