Nagaland organisations concerned over PIL on inner line permit

GUWAHATI: Several organisations in Nagaland have expressed concern over a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay in Supreme Court against extension of Inner Line Permit (ILP) to Dimapur.

The state government had decided to extend ILP to Dimapur, the only place in Nagaland where people from outside the state did not need the permit to enter, following demands from organisations such as the Naga Students Federation.

The Chakhesang Public Organisation (CPO) said the PIL posed a serious threat to the umbilical cord by which Nagaland was brought to be part of the Union of India.


“Scrapping of the law or even crippling any of its clauses would definitely be tantamount to severing of ties between Nagaland and the mainland,” read a statement from the CPO.

CPO president Mikha Kenye and general secretary Veduvo Rhakho stated that the PIL was an eye-opener to Nagas in general and the state government in particular, even as they stressed that it was the bounden responsibility of the state government to rise up to the occasion and ensure that no stone was left unturned for protecting the existing laws under any circumstances.

The organisation said that in view of the backwardness and the demography of the region, the then British government had promulgated the Bengal Eastern Frontier regulation (BEFR) of 1873 with the sole objective of giving protection to the Nagas and their land and resources from undue interferences of non-Nagas. Else, the Nagas would have been subjugated by illegal migrants in the long run and would have become second-class citizens in their own land, it said.