Af­ter meet­ing the Sikh San­gat at the Gur­d­wara Sahib in the Pun­jabi Lane area early this morn­ing, the DS­GMC del­e­ga­tion led by Pres­i­dent Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa sub­mit­ted an ex­haus­tive mem­o­ran­dum to the Gov­er­nor of Megha­laya Mr Satya Pal Ma­lik, chal­leng­ing the re­cent or­ders of the Chief Min­is­ter of Megha­laya -Con­rad Sangma and seek­ing his im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion to save the poor Sikh set­tlers, who are re­sid­ing in this area at Them-Iew Maw­long, Bara Bazaar, Shil­long for more than two cen­turies.  WSN Re­ports.

Con­tin­u­ing the three-year-long DS­GMC cam­paign in favour of the poor Sikhs of Shil­long, DS­GMc pres­i­dent Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa capped it to­day by sub­mit­ting a de­tailed legally-worded mem­o­ran­dum to the Gov­er­nor of Megha­laya Mr Satya Pal Ma­lik seek­ing his ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion to stop the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment from forcibly re­lo­cat­ing the poor Sikhs re­sid­ing in the Pun­jabi Lane -Har­i­jan Colony of Shil­long.

Since trou­ble broke out in Shil­long for the Sikhs in 2018, DS­GMC has pro­vided full lo­gis­ti­cal and le­gal sup­port to the Sikhs.  Speak­ing to the San­gat, Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa as­sured of all help to pro­tect their rights.

Pe­ti­tion­ing the Gov­er­nor, the DS­GMC mem­o­ran­dum states that the DS­GMC is a statu­tory and au­tonomous body man­ag­ing Gur­d­waras and Sikh ed­u­ca­tional and health in­sti­tu­tions and con­cerned with the wel­fare of the Sikhs.

“The Tri­par­tite agree­ment to take over land, as pro­posed by the High-Level Com­mit­tee of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment with the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board and the Syiem of Hima Myl­liem is patently il­le­gal, says the mem­o­ran­dum. Quot­ing the records of the tribal king Syiem of Hima Myl­liem, who is the owner of the prop­erty as per cus­tom­ary law, Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa has quoted that in 2008 it was con­firmed that the prop­erty vests with the poor Sikhs, “since the plot of land was al­lot­ted to them (the Har­i­jan com­mu­nity) long time back by the pre­de­ces­sors of Syiem of Hima Myl­liem.”

The mem­o­ran­dum also pointed out that  the agree­ment dated 4 Jan­u­ary 1954 of the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board and Syiem of Myl­liem clearly stated that, “…the por­tion of the Sweep­er’s Lane will con­tinue to be used as hereto­fore, i.e., for ac­com­mo­dat­ing for the sweep­er’s quar­ters and not to be used for any other pur­pose.”

Chal­leng­ing the cur­rent state­ment of the Ad­vo­cate Gen­eral of the state of Megha­laya and the Chief Min­is­ter of the state that all legally sound de­ci­sions will be taken, the Mem­o­ran­dum re­calls the state­ment of the Ad­vo­cate Gen­eral af­ter the first meet­ing of the High-Level Com­mit­tee as re­ported in the me­dia that, “..all ac­tions have to be done in ac­cor­dance with the law. What­ever ac­tions that had been taken in the past was in­ter­fered with by the Court be­cause Shi­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board or au­thor­ity con­cerned had not fol­lowed the steps/​pro­ce­dure laid down as per Law. If Govt. or Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board, in this case, is the right­ful owner, then the ac­tion to be fol­lowed has to be guided by the Megha­laya Pub­lic Premises Act.”

Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa has clar­i­fied that this is be­ing cited with­out prej­u­dice to the rights of the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee to chal­lenge this. It is an ad­mis­sion by the AG that il­le­gal acts have been done in the past.

The DS­GMC del­e­ga­tion com­pris­ing Jagdeep Singh Kahlon, Gurmeet Singh Bha­tia, Jaspreet Singh Karm­sar and Man­jin­der Singh Sirsa reached Shil­long to a rous­ing wel­come by the Sikh San­gat there in the hall of the new Gur­d­wara build­ing un­der con­struc­tion.

Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee sec­re­tary Gur­jit Singh, speak­ing to the World Sikh News said, “We are grate­ful to the DS­GMC lead­er­ship for hold­ing our hands in this hour of need. Our peo­ple will al­ways re­mem­ber their timely in­ter­ven­tion on our be­half. We now hope that we will not be forcibly evicted, still, we urge the Sikh lead­er­ship to main­tain eter­nal vig­i­lance.”