A fire incident in Dimapur on April 9 has cascaded into a series of events and ultimately resulted in the district administration of Dimapur to implement the ILP in the district with November 21,1979 as cut off date. That would also mean shifting ILP check gates to Dimapur-Karbi Anglong border from Chümoukedima when it was under Dimapur distrct . Today, the newly created Chümoukedima and Niuland districts will also have to take the call on ILP otherwise the entire exercise would be in vain. What has nudged the district authorities into action, was a report carried in this newspaper on April 17, citing video clips on social media, of show scores of suspected illegal immigrants blatantly and forcibly grabbing and pulling hose pipes from fire tenders which went to contain the blaze. The report in the newspaper and video clips on social media, had also drawn the attention of the district authorities and police who held a joint meeting with other stakeholders on April 17. The meeting decided to constitute a Joint Task Force(JTF) comprising of district administration and police to implement the ILP in Dimapur. It may be noted that the erstwhile Dimapur sub-division was excluded from the ILP regime since it was not a tribal area. It was only on November 21,1979 that Dimapur was declared a tribal area but still, the ILP was not notified for the next 40 years.As pressures gained to check illegal immigrants, the demand for ILP in Dimapur became vociferous. In order to implement the ILP, the state cabinet on February 15,2019 approved the proposal to bring Dimapur district under the ambit of the ILP (the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation Act 1873). The cabinet reaffirmed the decision and ILP was made applicable to Dimapur through a notification dated December 11,2019. The state government also decided the cut-off date as November 21,1979 to determine who is and who is not an indigenous inhabitant of Nagaland since it was on that date and year that Dimapur was made a tribal area under the state. In 2019, the cut-off date was not accepted by the state’s apex tribal organisations including indigenous non-Naga communities. Fixing November 21,1979 as a cut-off date raised several problems .One of which was that indigenous inhabitant certificates meant for recognised scheduled tribes of the state were wrongly issued to many ineligible persons. This led to many ineligible persons enjoying the privileges that were meant for indigenous inhabitants, such as availing job opportunities based on 100% reservation of all non-technical and 80% reservation of all other posts, availing scholarships, seats for professional and technical studies, loans etc. The complexity of the exercise also led the government to formulate the Register of Indigenous Inhabitant of Nagaland(RIIN) as notified on June 29,2019. After a series of consultations, the government eventually constituted the Banuo Z.Jamir Commission on RIIN on July 27,2019 and given three months’ time to bring out recommendations . The Commission submitted its recommendation at the end of 2019 and also reiterated the cut-off date as December 1,1963. However, the state government is keeping the report on cold storage and has not made it public. Even the assembly has not debated on the Commission report. Thus, when the DC Dimapur decided to implement ILP in Dimapur with November 21,1979 as cut-off date; it is clearly going to set the cat among the pigeons.
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