Aizawl, Sep 22 : The Mizoram government has asked police to set up a four-digit helpline for non-Mizos, who are being “harassed” in the state allegedly by some Mizo NGOs.
The non-Mizos are subjected to the scrutiny of their inner line permits issued by the liaison offices of the Mizoram government in different cities in the country, for enabling them to visit the state as either tourists or on business.
Chief minister Lalthanhawla disclosed this to a delegation of the minority community leaders from the Barak valley districts in south Assam, which met him at his residence in New Delhi early this week.
Northeast Congress Co-ordination Committee general secretary Sharif-uj-Jaman, Citizens’ Rights Preservation Committee spokesman Hafiz Rashid Choudhury and former principal of Karimganj College Kamaluddin Ahmed were part of the delegation.
The chief minister made it clear to the delegation that from now on only the police would be solely entrusted with the job of checking the inner line permits and not the array of NGOs.
The organisations like Young Mizo Association (YMA) and Mizo Zirlai Pawl (Mizo Students’ Organisation) have been identified as the masterminds behind the campaign against non-Mizos, particularly labourers and workers.
YMA sources alleged that the majority of such workers are actually Bangladeshis, who have settled around Nilambazar and Suprakandi villages close to the border in south Assam’s Karimganj district.
The central intelligence sources in Aizawl said at present there was over 10,000 Bengali Muslims, mostly from Bangladesh masquerading as Indian citizens and living in Mizoram.
Their inner line permits are mostly issued by the Mizoram government liaison office at Sonai Road in Silchar under the East Bengal Frontier Regulation Act, enacted in 1873, to protect the indigenous population. The liaison office sources here today said on an average, 42,000 inner-line passes are issued every year.
A new group, Forum for the Protection of Non-Mizos, organised a rally in Silchar from the DSA stadium to the Mizoram government circuit house on Monday to protest against the alleged harassment of non-Mizos in Mizoram.
0 comments:
Post a Comment