ARUNACHAL PRADESH: PPA FOR AMENDING ‘DEFECTIVE’ STATEHOOD ACT

The People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) today organized an interactive session on the “Defective Arunachal Statehood Act of 1986 and the Role of state MPs in the Parliament”.

Addressing the session, PPA President khafa Bengia said, “The interactive session on the Defective Statehood Act of 1986 and the expected role of our Members of Parliament is being organized as an awareness campaign about how the educated younger generation of the state and the general voters should realise before exercising their valuable franchise rights in any of the future elections in the country.”

Distributing the photocopies of the recorded statements of both the former Parliamentarians P K Thungon and Wangpa Lowang – representatives of Western and Eastern Parliamentary Constituencies in the Lok Sabha – while the Statehood Bill of Arunachal Pradesh was being placed in the Parliament in 1986, Bengia claimed, “The recorded documents reveal that both the Parliamentarians had raised their deep concerns on few major loopholes in the Statehood Bill and had pleaded for necessary amendments.”

He maintained, “We have to recall these old records because we want to reveal how the earlier Congress Parliamentarians tried their best to amend the defects in the Arunachal Statehood Bill when both the Centre and the state had the same Congress governments. In spite of their tireless efforts, the necessary amendments could never take place.

It is again a great coincidence that today we have both the Centre and the state being ruled by the same party (BJP). And we have Kiren Rijiju Member of Parliament representing Western Parliamentary Constituency in the Lok Sabha occupying the post of Union Minister of State Home. It is an opportunity for him to complete the task what his predecessors could not accomplice.”

PPA secretary general Kaling Jerang, participating in the session, said the PPA would like to appeal one and all to consider the task of correcting the defective Statehood Act of 1986 as the prime agenda for all the candidates cutting across party lines fighting for the Parliamentary seats in the state in the coming Lok Sabha election.

“The necessary amendment can give us back our lost pride and self respect. We must know that Arunachal, in spite of being one of the most resourceful states in the country, has been reduced to the status of dependency. The people in the state are so dependent on the Centre that we have become visionless.

This dependency syndrome has to be done away with by amending the defective Statehood Act that will finally give us back our ownership rights in every sense – culture, customary rights and traditional tribal rights over our land, forest, river and untapped mineral resources,” he added.