Rana Ajit/ New Delhi, 23 January 2004
The Election Commission has warned it would not hold Assembly polls in Arunachal Pradesh unless the State Government includes the Chakmas in the electoral rolls. The Chakmas are living in Arunachal Pradesh for more than four decades.
The commission is Irked by the Arunchal Pradesh Government's decision against enrolling the Chakmas in the voters' list for not having a Inner Line Permit - a permit that is required to visit certain border states. As a result of this, the Commission from January two has already stopped its ongoing revision of the electoral rolls in four Assembly segments that also form parts of the Lok Sabha constituencies in both East Arunachal Pradesh and West Arunachal Pradesh.
"The conduct of any and all elections in the four assembly constituencies of Doimukh, Chowkham, Bordumsa Diyum, and Miao along with all election related work, including the preparation or revision of the electoral rolls there shall stand suspended until further orders," ruled the commission, in a order dated January 2, 2004.
The commission was compelled to take this drastic measure, as the State Government officials engaged in the electoral roll revision, in an unprecedented step, refused to entertain the commission's repeated instructions to include the Chakmas. Their refusal was based on a State Cabinet decision taken on May 14, 2003, to not include non-Arunachalese people in the electoral roll unless they possessed the Inner Line Permit, issued under the Bengal East Area and Frontier Regulation, 1873.
Terming the decision as "wrong", the commission has pointed out that even the Supreme Court of India and the Delhi High Court, in their respective orders on two different petitions dealing with the question of the settlement of the Chakmas in the state and granting of Indian citizenship to them, have held that "the Chakmas, born in India on or after January 26, 1950, but before July 1, 1985, and living in the state, are to be treated as ordinarily residents of the state and are entitled to be registered in the electoral roll of the state."
The commission had also met the Arunachal Pradesh Chief minister on August 28, 2003, and on the basis of the Supreme Court order dated January 9, 1996 and the Delhi High Court order dated September 28, 2000, had conveyed to him that "so long as the Chakmas were ordinarily residents in the state, they could not be denied their Constitutional right of enrolment of their names in the electoral rolls of the state."
Subsequently, in September 2003, the commission had also conveyed to him through an official communication that "the preparation and revision of the electoral rolls was a constitutional duty conferred on the commission by Article 324 (1) and the state Cabinet resolution refusing voting rights to the Chakmas was an hindrance to the commission's constitutional obligation to prepare and revise the electoral rolls".
This, in turn, will adversely affect the free and fair conduct of the elections, said the commission in its September, 2003 communication to the State Government, requesting it to suitably amend or altogether scrap its Cabinet resolution. The State Government's refusal to comply has resulted in an impasse.