Mizoram protests Gauhati High Court interim order on Inner Line Permit

The interim order was issued on June 13 following a miscellaneous petition filed by a little-known organisation known as the North East Plain’s People Traders and Youth Federation, which contended that the ILP stood in the way of their right to freely trade in Mizoram. It also complained that the local police arrested a large number of non-tribals in Aizawl on grounds of not possessing ILPs.

The petitioners also alleged that, besides the police, student organisations like the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) and Young Mizo Association (YMA) were harassing non-Mizo businessmen at the inter-state checkgate on the Assam-Mizoram border warning them that those found entering Mizoram without ILPs would be arrested.

While Mizoram Chief Minister Pu Zoramthanga has already said that his Government would move the Supreme Court to challenge the interim order restricting the state Government powers to arrest and deport non-tribals without valid ILPs, an all-party meeting at Aizawl last week—chaired by state Home Minister Tawnlui—authorised the CYMA to chalk out a series of protests against the court order.

“The issue is very sensitive and it is not the state Government alone but the Union of India that has been dragged to the High Court by the PIL. I am fully convinced the ILP would not be abolished,” Chief Minister Zoramthanga said.

“The ILP may have been a colonial legacy, but it is necessary to continue with it in view of large-scale illegal infiltration of people, especially from Bangladesh into Mizoram and other tribal states,” J H Zoremthanga, president of the CYMA, said over telephone from Aizawl.

The CYMA president said at a time when more organisations of the Northeast were demanding extension of permit regulations to their respective states, it was ridiculous to claim that the ILP should not be continued.