Pushed to the wall with a threat of re­lo­ca­tion within a week by the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment, the poor Sikhs of Shil­long got a shot in the arm in the form of sup­port from the lone Con­gress Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Vin­cent H Pala en­dors­ing their rights and the civil rights body Thma U Ran­gli-Juki also chal­leng­ing the for­ma­tion, con­tent and tim­ing of the re­lease of the re­port of the High-Level Com­mit­tee of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment and ask­ing for full res­i­den­tial rights to the Mazhabi Sikhs. WSN re­ports.

Former Union min­is­ter and Mem­ber Par­lia­ment from Shil­long Vin­cent H Pala call­ing for a court set­tle­ment on the is­sue of re­lo­ca­tion of poor Sikhs re­sid­ing in the Pun­jabi Lane in the Them Iew Maw­long area has come as a wel­come re­lief to the com­mu­nity un­der stress for a very long time.

Re­port­edly, the Shil­long MP said, “The gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya is giv­ing out big state­ments which have been chal­lenged by the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee as they have said that the mat­ter is sub­ju­dice. The gov­ern­ment should pre­sent its case in court rather than is­sue threats that this colony or that colony will be taken over.”

“The High-Level Com­mit­tee can make rec­om­men­da­tions but it does not mean that the court will recog­nise the com­mit­tee or even recog­nise the re­port of the Com­mit­tee,” he added. 

In a sig­nif­i­cant boost to the move­ment for restora­tion of rights to the poor Sikhs of Shil­long, the An­gela Ran­gad -the leader of the pro­gres­sive peo­ple’s group –Thma U Ran­gli-Juki which had cir­cu­lated a peo­ple’s procla­ma­tion in 2013, has is­sued a state­ment to the me­dia say­ing that the High-Level Com­mit­tee of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment had not taken views of a cross-sec­tion of the so­ci­ety into con­sid­er­a­tion.

Like the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee led by Gur­jit Singh, the Thma U Ran­gli-Juki (TUR) has also de­manded the state gov­ern­ment make the High-Level Com­mit­tee re­port pub­lic.

The World Sikh News learns that the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee has through RTI asked for a copy of the re­port since it was sub­mit­ted to Chief Min­is­ter Con­rad Sangma by the Deputy Chief Min­is­ter Pre­stone-led HLC, but so far, it has not been made avail­able to them. 

An­gela Ran­gad said, “The HLC was a mere in-house Com­mit­tee, which gave sug­ges­tions to it­self and now wants to im­ple­ment them forcibly. This is not ten­able.”

Al­leg­ing that there seems to be pol­i­tics be­hind the move to sub­mit the HLC re­port, she ques­tioned its tim­ing co­in­cid­ing with the up­com­ing by-elec­tions to three con­stituen­cies of the Megha­laya Leg­isla­tive As­sem­bly on 30 Oc­to­ber. 

The or­gan­i­sa­tion also re­it­er­ated its de­mand that the area in ques­tion is re­de­vel­oped with ba­sic ameni­ties in­clud­ing wa­ter sup­ply, san­i­ta­tion, elec­tric­ity, and res­i­den­tial hous­ing for the Mazhabi Sikhs.

“The Mazhabi Sikhs should be granted se­cu­rity of tenure of res­i­dence and res­i­den­tial hous­ing, ” said the TUR leader. 

Spelling out the truth in the mat­ter, the TUR peo­ple’s per­spec­tive is that his­tor­i­cally speak­ing, this area -the dis­puted Pun­jabi Lane area has been sus­cep­ti­ble to in­tim­i­da­tion and ha­rass­ment of peo­ple in gen­eral in­clud­ing cus­tomers, petty traders, farm­ers, taxi and bus dri­vers from crim­i­nal el­e­ments. As a re­sult of the non-ex­is­tence of quick re­dres­sal from po­lice ha­rass­ment, some of these ex­pe­ri­ences have turned into long term re­sent­ments.”

The Greater Shil­long Pro­gres­sive Hawk­ers & Street Ven­dors As­so­ci­a­tion (MGSPHSVA) have also come out in sup­port of the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee.