Setting a base year of 1961 for ILP 10 years too late : JCILPS

A mixture of the sweet and sour. So while the BJP led Government has gone ahead and fulfilled the demand/suggestion of setting a base year for the Inner Line Permit System to come effective, it has fallen short of the target set by the Joint Committee on Inner Line Permit System by 10 years. The stand of the Government seems to be setting 1961 as the base year is the right time while to the JCILPS it should be 1951. Both sides will have their merits and demerits but it should be granted that the Government has come some way in agreeing to a base year for the Inner Line Permit System to become effective. One only hopes that the needed records are there for either of the base year to become effective and meaningful. Early days yet, that is in so far as setting the base year is concerned, but be sure Manipur needs some thorough cleaning up. Everyone knows how the ILPS was won after much sweat, toil and tears with police constrained to use water canon on young students who had lined up on the roads of Imphal to demand the implementation of the ILPS to check the inflow of non-locals into the State of Manipur. One student even had to pay with his life in the course of the massive protests that were lined up during days when the ILPS movement was at its peak. Police engaged with protesters in the dead of the night with the protesters meeting the tear gas shells and rubber bullets with catapults and bonfires in the middle of the road. Reporters who had to cover events of the confrontation in different parts of Imphal can still recall how their two wheelers had to take numerous trips to the tyre workshops to mend the punctures, as a result of having to drive over broken glasses at many points of Imphal. Now all that has passed, but yet as the JCILPS was quick to point out, the ILP enforced in the State lacked teeth and substance. Qualifying the ILP with a base year is the answer, seems to be the argument of the JCILPS, but here again it is apparent that it is not at all satisfied with the base year of 1961 as it has come 10 years short of the 1951 cut off bench mark it had demanded. To the lay man who do not have the needed information and datum of the records of 1951 and 1961, the enforcement of the ILP is primarily to identify those who can and should qualify as natives of the land and not those who ‘wandered’ in here in search of greener pastures.
Apart from the difference between the Government and the JCILPS on the base year, the significant question is how effectively the Government can go about enforcing the ILP from 1961. How will the Government go about identifying or zeroing in on people who are believed to have come in after 1961 ? This is what would be interesting to the observers. What are the models that may be used to enforce the cut off year ? Only time will tell, but as noted, Manipur seems to be reeling under the question of who should be identified as ‘natives’ of the State and who are later entrants ? Equally interesting too would be to see how the Government would respond or react if anyone is found/confirmed to have entered the State after 1961 ? What will happen to the person/s found to have entered the State of Manipur after 1961 ? Is there any precedence from which Imphal can take a leave or two to make the cut off year meaningful and effective ? Tough to say for even today there  is nothing much to suggest that Assam, which has taken up the process of National Register of Citizens, has come anywhere near achieving its target. Now the significant question is, who are the ‘outsiders’, ‘non-locals’ to be identified or named under the 1961 cut off year ? This is what would be interesting to watch and observe. Anyway a cut off year of 1961 has been set by the Government and one may expect to hear more on this in the coming days.