Students body seeks PM Modi intervention to speed up delimitation of NE states

Referring to a delimitation commission set up by the Government of India in this connection, the NESFOD said that its hope for the delimitation was dashed as the government withdrew its notification issued in 2020 vide another notification dated 3rd March 2021, without assigning any reason.

New Delhi: Days after the Supreme Court sought a response from the Centre and others on a plea seeking directions to the Election Commission to conduct delimitation exercise of Parliamentary and State Assembly Constituencies of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Manipur, the North East Students’ Federation on Delimitation (NESFOD) on Friday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his personal intervention to start the delimitation exercise in these Northeastern States.

“Pursuant to the Delimitation Act 2002, the delimitation exercise in the whole country has been completed more than a decade ago in 2008. Barring the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, and Nagaland. The delimitation process in the four North East states was put on hold by the Presidential Ordinance in 2008 in the mere pretext of prevailing law and order situation in these States,” NESFOD said in a memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister's office.

Referring to a delimitation commission set up by the Government of India in this connection, the NESFOD said that its hope for the delimitation was short-lived as the government withdrew its notification issued in 2020 vide another notification dated 3rd March 2021 “without assigning any reason.”

“Whereas, the delimitation exercise in Jammu & Kashmir has since been completed. Yet the people of these four North East states have been compelled to continue to wait without any fault of theirs,” the student federation said. A similar memorandum has also been submitted to the Union Home Minister, Law & Justice Minister, and Election Commission of India.

Meanwhile, talking to ETV Bharat, Delimitation Demand Committee for the North East’s (DDC-NE) convenor Habung Payeng said that the government should show its sincerity by conducting the delimitation exercise in the Northeastern States.

“Since 2002, it is to be noted that various Parliamentary and State assembly elections have been conducted successfully in these four states without any issue of law and order. These four states deserve equal treatment on par with the rest of India and the delimitation exercise needs to be conducted at the earliest. Either by constituting a commission under the Delimitation Act, 2002 or through the Election Commission under Section 8A of Representation of Peoples Act as there are no justifiable reasons for not conducting delimitation,” said Payeng.

The DDC-NE has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court seeking delimitation in these four States. The court has also granted the petitioners the liberty to serve notices to the Standing Counsels of the four NE states.