Bishnupriya Manipuris cry foul against panchayat reservation policy
From our Special Correspondent
SILCHAR, Dec 11: Bishnupriya Manipuri Janajagaran Mukta Mancha (BMJMM) has expressed its serious resentment at the move of the district administration of Cachar for reservation of seats for the panchayat elections which has resulted in injustice to the community as a whole. Articulating his grievances, Gurudas Sinha, president of the Mancha, said that the modus-operandi in which the reservation of seats in the district of Cachar has been done cannot but debar their community from contesting in the forthcoming panchayat elections. He added to say that their community is unable to find any reason why the second largest linguistic minority community of the district with more than 99 per cent literacy rate should be subjected to denial and injustice.
In a memorandum addressed to the Deputy Commissioner of Cachar today, the members of the Mancha, signatories to it, have regretted that the deprivation is all the more unfortunate as their community has no elected representative from this valley of Barak as a whole either in the state legislative assembly or in the Lok Sabha. In the previous panchayat elections, only on a limited seats, their representatives could get elected.
The reservation as formulated and decided, according to the memorandum, will have dominance of non-scheduled caste major communities in the panchayats even in the majority Bishnupriya Manipuri areas. This will be evident from the fact that in the previous panchayat elections, Bishnupriya Manipuris could not make entry in their own community dominated gaon panchayats of Ambicapur, Bhaijantipur, Chincoorie, Masughat, Sewti among others.
They have made it clear that they are not against reservation of seats for SC and ST communities, but the interest of non-SC and non-ST majority communities should have been taken into consideration. The Mancha members who include Dilip Kumar Sinha, Krishna Das Sinha, Chand Babu Sinha, Ranjit Sinha and Anil Krishna Sinha, besides Gurudas Sinha, have noted with pain that the policy of reservation of seats in the ensuing panchayat elections in descending order has directly affected more than 85 per cent of the citizens. They have strongly opposed this descending order policy of reservation.
The memorandum contends and suggests that 20 per cent of the total population of the district as per census of 2011 should be reserved for SC/ST and not 14.8 per cent as decided. This will eliminate discrimination, denial and deprivation to the Bishnupriya Manipuris. A copy of this memorandum was submitted to the Chief Minister of Assam and the Secretary of Assam State Election Commission for their intervention and action.
Source: http://www.sentinelassam.com