The inner-line permit (ILP) system and Sixth Schedule status cannot prevent settlement of outsiders if the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is implemented in the Northeast, the Sanmilito Sangram Parishad (SSP), a conglomeration of 43 Assam-based organisations, has warned.

The Sixth Schedule allows special provisions for the administration of tribal areas in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram while the inner-line permit (ILP) is a mandatory travel document which visitors from the rest of the country must carry while visiting Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur. The main objective of these “shields” is to protect the indigenous population by preventing the settlement of “outsiders”.

Parishad coordinator Holiram Terang told The Telegraph, “By exempting the northeastern states having inner-line permit system and the Sixth Schedule areas from the purview of CAA, the Centre is trying to convince the people that CAA is not a threat for these areas. However, the implication will be polar opposite.”

Terang stressed that the limited provisions of autonomous councils under the Sixth Schedule cannot prevent further settlement of outsiders.

“The state can force the tribal councils or the ILP states to accommodate outsiders as and when it is felt necessary,” he added.

Terang claimed that despite the existence of autonomous district councils, nearly a thousand families, Bengali Hindu refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan, were forcefully settled in Borbil under Howraghat police station in the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council area in the 1960s.

He said another hundred Garo refugee families were settled at Rongkhang reserve forest under present West Karbi Anglong district later in the decade.

“The size of these refugee populations has increased manifold. A majority of them are now voters and a determinant factor in the Assembly, Parliament and even in the council’s elections,” Terang said, stressing that the governor or the state machinery can subvert the ILP and councils at any point of time to accommodate outsiders from time to time.

He observed that once the CAA is implemented, the outsiders settled both inside and outside the scheduled areas would get privileges on a par with the indigenous people.

“The refugees, after getting citizenship, will exercise equal rights and privileges. Apparently, the outsiders will outnumber the indigenous population. Therefore, resistance and democratic movement until withdrawal of the CAA is the only alternative to safeguard the indigenous people from the aggression of the refugees,” he said.