Deeply per­turbed by the im­par­tial, one-sided pub­lic ut­ter­ances, ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­tions and po­lit­i­cal threats for the past nearly two years by the mem­bers of the High Level Com­mit­tee formed by the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment, ac­tu­ally no­ti­fied only for sug­ges­tions and ideas re­lat­ing to the re­lo­ca­tion of poor Sikhs, the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee, rep­re­sent­ing the 300 plus fam­i­lies of poor Sikhs of Shil­long re­cently filed an­other pe­ti­tion in the High Court of Megha­laya at Shil­long. In a huge re­lief to the poor pe­ti­tion­ers, on 9 April, Jus­tice Ran­jit More granted ad-in­terim sta­tus quo to be main­tained by both the High Level Com­mit­tee of the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya and the pe­ti­tion­ers -Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee, with the next date of hear­ing fixed for 25 May 2021.

THE BE­LEA­GUERED SHIL­LONG SIKHS, re­sid­ing there for more than two cen­turies, who face forcible evic­tion at the hands of the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya, want­ing to “beau­tify” the habi­tat of the poor for its cur­rent mon­e­tary value un­der the pres­sure of lo­cal tribal pres­sure groups and the os­ten­si­ble in­tent to con­vert Shil­long into a Smart City, were granted ad-in­terim sta­tus quo or­der from the High Court of Megha­laya while con­sid­er­ing a fresh pe­ti­tion of the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee. Judge Ran­jit More ruled that “both the par­ties shall main­tain sta­tus quo as of to­day in re­spect of Sweeper Colony/​Pun­jabi Lane/​Har­i­jan Colony at Bara Bazar.”

Ac­cept­ing the plea of the pe­ti­tion­ers, the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee ver­sus High Level Com­mit­tee and oth­ers, through DS­GMC-ap­pointed le­gal coun­sel R. Kha­tri, the judge pro­nounced the ad-in­terim sta­tus quo as the AAG N. D. Chul­lai sought more time which was granted with the next date of hear­ing 25 May 2021.

The Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee has been fac­ing un­due and un­nec­es­sary crit­i­cism and pres­sure from the press state­ments of the Min­istry of Ur­ban Af­fairs, the Deputy Chief Min­is­ter Pre­stone Tyn­song, who is also the chair­per­son of the High Level Com­mit­tee and the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board for the last two years con­tended through their coun­sel R. Kha­tri, that the High Level Com­mit­tee was formed on 4 June 2018 to ex­am­ine records and doc­u­ments and make prac­ti­cally fea­si­ble so­lu­tions. The lawyer clearly stated in his pe­ti­tion and sub­mis­sion to the High Court of Megha­laya that there is no men­tion in the no­ti­fi­ca­tion for any ac­tion what­so­ever to be taken by the High Level Com­mit­tee or any other au­thor­ity in this re­gard.

The Con­fed­er­a­tion of Megha­laya So­cial Or­gan­i­sa­tions, com­pris­ing 19 pres­sure groups has been forc­ing the gov­ern­ment to act fast in the re­lo­ca­tion of the res­i­dents of the Har­i­jan Colony.  CoSMO chair­per­son Robertjune Khar­jahrin has stated in the me­dia that there is great pub­lic de­mand for re­lo­ca­tion and every sec­tion of the com­mu­nity wants it.  He in his twisted logic has also stated that the res­i­den­tial ar­eas of the poor Sikhs are un­hy­gienic and un­safe if peo­ple set­tle very close to the mar­ket area. He has asked the Ur­ban Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sni­awha­lang Dhar to “act as per the wish and as­pi­ra­tions of the peo­ple.”

“Our chil­dren, women and all fam­i­lies are un­der deep stress for the last many years and we wish to see that this comes to an end soon. Our an­ces­tors made Shil­long their home two cen­turies back and we are de­ter­mined to main­tain our habi­tat. We have been here for four-five gen­er­a­tions. “

Gur­jeet Singh, Sec­re­tary, Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee

In the past, some of their con­stituents have even threat­ened the poor Sikhs of dire con­se­quences and re­sented the in­ter­est taken by Sikh or­gan­i­sa­tions, ac­tivists and the Pun­jab gov­ern­ment.

Fur­ther­more, in the pres­ence of mem­bers of the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee in the court, it was pleaded that many meet­ings of the High Level Com­mit­tee have taken place and there is a pal­pa­ble fear that the gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya di­rectly or through the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion may re­sort to the evic­tion of the few hun­dred vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies liv­ing in the so-called Sweeper Colony, Sweeper Lane, Maw­long Haat at Bara Bazar.

“I am of the prima fa­cie opin­ion that the ap­pre­hen­sion of the pe­ti­tioner mem­bers (re­gard­ing the threat of en­forced evic­tion) is jus­ti­fied.’

Jus­tice Ran­jit More, Judge, High Court of Megha­laya at Shil­long

Jus­tice Ran­jit More in his 2-page or­der of 9 April states, “I am of the prima fa­cie opin­ion that the ap­pre­hen­sion of the pe­ti­tioner mem­bers is jus­ti­fied.’

Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee sec­re­tary Gur­jeet Singh, who has been spear­head­ing the strug­gle for sur­vival and habi­tat of the hun­dreds of this com­mu­nity of Safai Karam­charis for many years, in his re­ac­tion to the lat­est judge­ment of the court said, “We are poor Sikhs and we will con­tinue our fight for jus­tice. We hope and pray that we will be able to get on with our lives with­out fear of evic­tion.”

“Our chil­dren, women and all fam­i­lies are un­der deep stress for the last many years and we wish to see that this comes to an end soon. Our an­ces­tors made Shil­long their home two cen­turies back and we are de­ter­mined to main­tain our habi­tat. We have been here for four-five gen­er­a­tions. Over the decades, we have all doc­u­men­ta­tion of ra­tion cards, Aad­har cards, Voter cards, Elec­tric­ity bills, etc, which any per­ma­nent cit­i­zen is en­ti­tled to.”

The 1954 agree­ment with the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board and the Syiem of Hima Myl­liem (the tra­di­tional hi­er­ar­chi­cal leader/​royal king of the Khasi tribe) had clearly men­tioned that no harm will be done to the dwellings of the res­i­dents of the Sweeper Colony and that they would con­tinue to live where they are.  The first clause of the deed, among other things, reads, “…the re­main­ing por­tion of the sweep­er’s line will con­tinue to be used hereto­fore, i.e. for ac­com­mo­dat­ing for the sweep­er’s quar­ters and not to be used for any other pur­pose.”

Called in by the then British In­dian army, the poor Sikhs made Shil­long their home and gen­er­a­tions have not re­turned back to their home­land Pun­jab. It would be a grave in­jus­tice for any gov­ern­ment of any po­lit­i­cal party to forcibly evict poor peo­ple.

It would be a grave in­jus­tice for any gov­ern­ment of any po­lit­i­cal party to forcibly evict poor peo­ple.

In his or­der, the pre­sid­ing judge has said that he has ex­am­ined the doc­u­ments an­nexed to the main pe­ti­tion by the pe­ti­tioner on pages 114, 122 and 140 and found them to be re­li­able and sig­nif­i­cant. Se­nior Coun­sel Mr R Kha­tri has at­tached a string of an­nex­ures to this fresh pe­ti­tion for sta­tus quo af­firm­ing the rights of the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee to their habi­tat.

All three doc­u­ments cited by the pe­ti­tioner and al­luded to by Jus­tice Ran­jit More un­am­bigu­ously show the malafide in­tent of the var­i­ous de­part­ments of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment in its zeal to up­root and evict the poor Sikhs re­sid­ing in the Bara Bazar area of Shil­long for more than two cen­turies of which the judge has taken right­ful cog­nizance.

The first an­nex­ure on page 114 of the pe­ti­tion is a ‘most ur­gent’ let­ter from the Ur­ban Af­fairs de­part­ment of the Gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya, dated 28 May 20-19 to the Di­rec­tor Ur­ban Af­fairs and the CEO Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board, di­rect­ing them to “shift em­ploy­ees (sweep­ers) oc­cu­py­ing Sweeper Colony (Lew­duh) to other ar­eas within your re­spec­tive De­part­ment as per the de­ci­sion of the High Level Com­mit­tee meet­ing held on 10th of May 2019.”

The An­nex­ure on page 122 of the pe­ti­tion is a let­ter dated 27 July 2019 of the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board to the Pres­i­dent/​Sec­re­tary of the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee which sought ‘in­for­ma­tion from the res­i­dents of the area in a spec­i­fied for­mat” un­der di­rec­tion from the High Level Com­mit­tee.

Sim­i­larly, An­nex­ure 140 is a let­ter dated 20 May 2019 of the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board to the Joint Sec­re­tary of the Ur­ban Af­fairs De­part­ment di­rect­ing “to kindly take up from your end with the Heads of the De­part­ments listed in the at­tached an­nex­ure to shift their em­ploy­ees oc­cu­py­ing the Sweep­ers Colony area within their re­spec­tive ju­ris­dic­tion.”

It is crys­tal clear that the High Level Com­mit­tee and its chair­per­son -Deputy Chief Min­is­ter Pre­stone Tyn­song has been go­ing over­board -be­yond the scope of the no­ti­fi­ca­tion through ad­min­is­tra­tive steps, as cited in the cur­rent pe­ti­tion.

The High Level Com­mit­tee has seven mem­bers with Deputy Chief Min­is­ter Pre­stone Tyn­song, as the chair­per­son. The 4 June 2018 no­ti­fi­ca­tion is­sued by the then Ad­di­tional Chief Sec­re­tary M. S. Rao, clearly stated that,

“The terms of ref­er­ence of the High Level Com­mit­tee are as fol­lows:

a.  The Com­mit­tee shall ex­am­ine all rel­e­vant records and doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to the re­lo­ca­tion of the Sweeper Colony, Sweeper Lane, Maw­long Hat.
b.  The Com­mit­tee shall rec­om­mend a prac­ti­cally fea­si­ble so­lu­tion(s) for re­lo­ca­tion of the Sweeper Colony.”

It is crys­tal clear that the High Level Com­mit­tee and its chair­per­son -Deputy Chief Min­is­ter Pre­stone Tyn­song has been go­ing over­board -be­yond the scope of the no­ti­fi­ca­tion through ad­min­is­tra­tive steps, as cited in the cur­rent pe­ti­tion. He has also been mak­ing ad­verse com­ments in the me­dia re­gard­ing the claim of the poor Sikh res­i­dents even when the mat­ter is sub-ju­dice. Re­cently, on the floor of the Megha­laya As­sem­bly, with­out the High Level Com­mit­tee re­port of its find­ings, he is re­ported to have said that the mat­ter of re­lo­ca­tion of the Sweep­ers Colony and the evic­tion of the Sikhs there will be re­solved soon.

Presently, an un­law­ful at­tempt is be­ing made to per­suade and pres­sur­ize the Syiem of Myl­liem to sign a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the Syiem of Myl­liem and the state gov­ern­ment in­volv­ing the trans­fer of land on lease to the state gov­ern­ment, which is be­ing fa­cil­i­tated by the KHADC -Khasi Hills Au­tonomous Dis­trict Coun­cil.  This has been dis­puted by the Har­i­jan Pan­chayat Com­mit­tee and its sec­re­tary Gur­jeet Singh has said that “the in­cum­bent Syiem has no right on the plot as the same was given to the poor Sikhs in 1853.”

The High Level Com­mit­tee, through the me­dia, has at­tempted to shield the Shil­long Mu­nic­i­pal Board by giv­ing it wide pow­ers to take ac­tions against the res­i­dents of the area in­clud­ing among other things, tak­ing il­le­gal stock-tak­ing of houses of the res­i­dents and a house-to-house cen­sus of the pop­u­la­tion of the poor Sikhs, even in their ab­sence from their homes.

All three doc­u­ments cited by the pe­ti­tioner and al­luded to by Jus­tice Ran­jit More un­am­bigu­ously show the malafide in­tent of the var­i­ous de­part­ments of the Megha­laya gov­ern­ment in its zeal to up­root and evict the poor Sikhs re­sid­ing in the Bara Bazar area of Shil­long for more than two cen­turies of which the judge has taken right­ful cog­nizance.

For the record, though the poor Sikhs have been fight­ing a long le­gal bat­tle for the sur­vival of their habi­tat, cur­rently since 2018, the High Court has been con­sid­er­ing a slew of pe­ti­tions with the poor Sikh res­i­dents seek­ing pro­tec­tion from evic­tion. The Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties and the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Safai Karam­charis have also made rec­om­men­da­tions to the Gov­ern­ment of Megha­laya for non-in­ter­fer­ence in the lives of the poor Sikhs dur­ing this pe­riod. Even the Na­tional Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion has also in­ter­vened in the mat­ter.

 

Re­cently, on 1 April 2021, the High Court Judge Jus­tice W. Di­eng­doh had also ‘dis­missed as with­drawn’ a re­view pe­ti­tion chal­leng­ing a pre­vi­ous High Court or­der of Jus­tice R Sen of 15 Feb­ru­ary 2019, grant­ing sta­tus quo, though an ap­peal against the or­der is still pend­ing in the High Court.

The 9 April 2021 High Court of Megha­laya at Shil­long or­der of Jus­tice Ran­jit More of­fers due re­lief and a glim­mer of hope for a per­ma­nent sta­tus quo for the poor Shil­long Sikhs.