Shillong remains under curfew as Army stages flag march
The CM announced the formation of a seven-member high-level committee headed by Deputy CM Prestone Tynsong, which will work towards finding a permanent solution to the long-pending issue of relocation of the settlers in Punjabi Lane.
Around 350 families live in ‘Punjabi Lane’. (Express file photo by Abhishek Saha)
Chief Minister Conrad Sangma Monday said that normalcy is expected to return to Shillong very soon, even as the city remained under curfew after 4 pm and the Indian Army staged a flag march.
The CM announced the formation of a seven-member high-level committee headed by Deputy CM Prestone Tynsong, which will work towards finding a permanent solution to the long-pending issue of relocation of the settlers in Punjabi Lane.
Punjabi Lane, a Sikh-dominated locality in Shillong, is at the epicentre of the trouble in the city. An altercation between a Khasi boy and a Punjabi woman last Thursday escalated into a violent showdown between the two communities. The CM reiterated that one person had been arrested in the case of the assault on the Khasi teenager.
“[Normalcy will return] Hopefully very soon. But it will be difficult for me to say by this particular date. But… we will see improvement in the situation in the days to come. We have got a positive response [from meeting with various delegations],” Sangma told a press gathering at the state secretariat.
Sangma added that the committee had already started its work and the urban affairs department had been asked to immediately submit a report in details regarding the current position of the area, legal aspects and history.
In the evening, a delegation of protesters met the CM at the Secretariat submitted a memorandum. Witnesses said that there was commotion as some of the members of the delegation tried to forcibly enter the secretariat campus and police tried to stop them.
The CM ruled out any breakdown of law and order when the protesters came. “There was no breakdown of law and order. They had come to submit a memorandum. They needed to meet the CM and the government,” he said.
Sangma, who held several rounds of meetings with various organisations and stakeholders, said that “the solution is not in the streets but on the table” and that the government was ready for discussion and talks.
Curfew was imposed across Shillong city from 4 pm Monday to 5 am Tuesday in addition to the curfew order already in place in 14 troubled localities of the city. P S Dkhar, Deputy Commissioner of East Khasi Hills District, said the decision was taken in the light of information that there was a “serious breakdown of law and order in Shillong city” and that there was every likelihood of “serious breach of peace which may lead to acts of arson, targeting vehicles and causing loss of life and property”.
A four-member delegation of the Punjab government, headed by cabinet minister Sukhjinder Randhawa, visited Shillong and met residents of Punjabi Lane as well as the CM.
Randhawa told The Indian Express that the CM explained to them the entire situation. “To the Sikh people, we said that Punjab will support you, but are in Shillong —- where you say you have been living for the last 100-200 years —- you have to settle the issues like brothers and stay peacefully,” said Randhawa. “I am very confident about CM Sangma. I am sure he will do justice to the Sikh community.”
PTI adds: The National Commission for Minorities will send a member to Shillong to investigate the clashes between residents of the city’s Punjabi Line area and Khasi drivers of state-run buses, the panel’s chief said.
The panel has decided to send its member Manjit Singh Rai from Punjab to Shillong to assess the situation, said NCM chairperson Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi.
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