Lamka, Sep 20: Demonstrating their disillusion- ment with the State Gover-nment’s alleged anti-tribal policy, CoPTAM today demanded that the present tribal Ministers and MLAs in the State Assembly should publicly declare their stance on the issue on or before October 1.
CoPTAM’s demand from the elected representatives of hill tribes was made against the backdrop of its request to the newly elected members of the ADCs to take up the issue at their respective level and the pronouncement of the closure or bandh of all Government offices, vehicles, programme and works in the hill districts from tomorrow.
‘The public deserve to know whether they choose to remain a party to the devilish game plan or face public wrath sooner or later,’ said CoPTAM in a statement where they also declared, ‘We are prepared to pay the highest price if circumstances compel us to adopt the extreme steps for the betterment of our future.’
On the charges levelled against the Government, it said, ‘the imposition of fixed decadal population growth rate for the tribal in Manipur State by the government and subsequent steps taken by Churachandpur district administration to reduce the population by deleting some people of the district from census records is another facets of the Government’s anti-tribal policy.
Deleting people from census records is unlawful, unconstitutional and are atrocious acts committed by none other than the Government and its adminis- trative machinery.’
The anti-tribal policy of the SPF Government in census operations, district boundary, and maintaining of land records is explicitly exposed today; it alleged as well and contended the irony behind the State Government reaction to the 15 percent negative growth rate in Thanlon sub-division and the 40 percent positive growth rate in Churachandpur district headquarters.
While it is least concerned with the former it has dubbed the laltter as ‘abnormal growth,’ charged CoPTAM.
‘Because the increase in Churachandpur sub-division compensated the cumulative loss in other sub-divisions, the overall district population growth still remain merely at 29.34%,’ it further argued and queried what compelled the SPF Government to dictate tribal population growth rate, directly involve in census operation, even to the extends of violating the laws. CoPTAM also said it fully endorsed the steps initiated by CDSU in protest against the unlawful deletion of tribal people from census records in Chura-chandpur district. The JAC on General Census in Henglep sub-division also declared their support and co-operation to CoPTAM and CDSU in regards to the census exercise. ‘The JAC strongly condemn an act of power exercise to cancel the living population,’ said their statement that echoes the CDSU calls on enumerators and supervisors to refrain from the census exercise.
~ TSE
