Af­ter two years of the Jus­tice Sen or­der of the High Court of Megha­laya at Shil­long, or­der­ing sta­tus quo ante in the premises and lives of the poor Sikhs re­sid­ing in the Bara Bazar area of Shil­long for the last two cen­turies and more, the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya in a face-sav­ing mea­sure has with­drawn its re­view pe­ti­tion chal­leng­ing the said or­der. WSN ed­i­tor Jag­mo­han Singh high­lights the anti-mi­nor­ity game­plan of the NPP-BJP-led Megha­laya gov­ern­ment and calls for an ur­gent Sikh re­sponse.

THE DAMO­CLES’S SWORD STILL HANGS OVER the lives of the be­lea­guered Sikhs there as the Ap­peal of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment on the mat­ter of main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo of poor Shil­long Sikhs is still un­der con­sid­er­a­tion of the court, even af­ter the with­drawal of the re­view pe­ti­tion on the same sub­ject. So far no date of hear­ing has been fixed as in the past year pro­ceed­ings were de­layed due to the COVID19 pan­demic.

On 1 April 2021, af­ter the court re­opened af­ter a long Covid19-en­forced gap, rep­re­sented by an em­i­nent lawyer from Shil­long M. F. Qureshi, with no DS­GMC lawyer ap­pear­ing. Jus­tice Di­eng­doh ac­cepted the state’s plea to with­draw the pe­ti­tion, “in view of the fact that on the same is­sue and sub­ject mat­ter, an ap­peal is pend­ing be­fore the Di­vi­sion Bench of this Court, this mat­ter may be al­lowed to be with­drawn.”

SGPC, DS­GMC and the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment must be­come proac­tive again and take up the case of Shil­long Sikhs.

On 15 Feb­ru­ary 2019, Jus­tice S. R. Sen, af­ter ver­bally ad­mon­ish­ing the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya in open court, ac­cept­ing the plea of the poor Shil­long Sikhs, had passed an or­der on the writ filed by DS­GMC lawyers N. Beni­pal and Harpreet Singh Hora stat­ing, “I di­rect the gov­ern­ment and all other agen­cies not to dis­turb the pe­ti­tion­ers in any man­ner and if at all they want to evict or re­move them, they are to ap­proach the Civil Court and the Civil Court will pass a proper judg­ment af­ter giv­ing equal op­por­tu­nity to both the par­ties and de­cide the ti­tle in ac­cor­dance with the law.

The or­der fur­ther stated that “Dis­trict ad­min­is­tra­tion is di­rected to arrange se­cu­rity to the pe­ti­tion­ers and to main­tain law and or­der.”

Un­der­stand­ably, this or­der irked the gov­ern­ment and in a quirky move, rushed to file a re­view and an ap­peal on the same day, per­haps in an at­tempt to cir­cum­vent due process to ma­noeu­vre a court or­der in their favour. Po­lit­i­cal and hu­man rights ob­servers in Pun­jab mon­i­tor­ing the de­vel­op­ments in Shil­long since the cur­rent con­fla­gra­tion say, “the gov­ern­ment has with­drawn the re­view pe­ti­tion to save its skin in the ap­peal.”

Clearly, in view of the 15 Feb­ru­ary 2019 or­der and the with­drawal of the re­view pe­ti­tion on 1 April 2021, the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya is on a weak wicket.

“We are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing our le­gal and so­cial fight for the pro­tec­tion of our hu­man rights, so­cial rights and rights as cit­i­zens of Megha­laya,”

Gur­jeet Singh, Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee, Bara Bazaar, Shil­long

The NPP-BJP led Megha­laya De­mo­c­ra­tic Front gov­ern­ment com­pris­ing the main re­gional groups and the two-mem­ber Bharatiya Janata Party has not stopped eye­ing the lands of the poor Sikhs in the heart of cap­i­tal Shil­long, in­hab­ited by them for two cen­turies. Since the last few weeks, the state gov­ern­ment lead­er­ship has been is­su­ing state­ments on the floor of the state as­sem­bly as well as to the me­dia threat­en­ing that the High-Level Com­mit­tee will soon re­lease its re­port on the evic­tion of the poor Sikhs.

Hereto­fore, the Sikh lead­er­ship, the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment, the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties, the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Safai Karam­charis have all chas­tised the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment and in their re­ports urged it not to dis­turb the lives of the poor Shil­long Sikhs.

The Gur­jeet Singh-led Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee in Shil­long has left no stone un­turned to main­tain peace, san­ity and work zeal­ously to en­sure that the lives of the poor Sikhs are not dis­turbed in any man­ner.

“We are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing our le­gal and so­cial fight for the pro­tec­tion of our hu­man rights, so­cial rights and rights as cit­i­zens of Megha­laya,” said Gur­jeet Singh, while speak­ing to WSN on the phone line from Shil­long, in his re­ac­tion to the cur­rent Megha­laya High Court or­der.

It is ironic that the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya, un­der pres­sure from the in­dige­nous groups is pur­su­ing an ex­clu­sion pol­icy against an­other mi­nor­ity com­mu­nity, which has made the dis­tant lands their homes. Greed in the name of beau­ti­fi­ca­tion and cor­po­rati­sa­tion of the lands of the mar­ginal Sikh com­mu­nity is un­miss­able.

There is an ur­gent need for the SGPC, DS­GMC and the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment to take up the case of Shil­long Sikhs. There is no room for com­pla­cence.