As the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) is intensifying its campaign in Meghalaya, the issue of illegal migration has shifted its attention from neighbouring Assam to the hill state, here, which shares a 443 km border, porous at many places, with Bangladesh.
It was in Assam where the issue of illegal migration has been a poll plank during every election campaign post-India’s independence. Though Meghalaya is also at the receiving end, the issue has not found much space in the electoral debates of the state until now when TMC is contesting as the principal opposition.
Even though Trinamool’s grassroots presence in the hill state is arguably negligible, being the principal opposition this time, the exodus of prominent Congress MLAs into the party has made it a significant factor that can decide which party is going to rule the state in the next five years.
With Mukul Sangma, former two-time Congress Chief Minister and a popular leader in Garo Hill where 24 out of the 60 Assembly Seats lie, TMC has managed to divert a great chunk of Congress votes. Another former Congress leader Charles Pyngrope, now a TMC candidate, is a popular face in Khasi Hills where the capital city of Shillong is situated.
Further, with TMC fielding candidates in 58 seats of the Meghalaya Assembly, the rival parties are trying to discredit the party for its alleged minority vote bank politics.
While the problem of illegal migration in Meghalaya is as old as India’s independence, the state got highly alerted when 1.9 million people got excluded from the National Register of Citizenship (NRC) implemented in Assam following which Chief Minister Conrad Sangma requested the Centre to put 24-hours strict vigil along the border.
Since then the demand for Inner Line Permit (ILP), a pass required for non-citizens to enter the restricted tribal areas, also intensified. This time the issue of illegal migration has become a poll plank that BJP and National People’s Party (NPP), the two main parties pulling off against TMC branding it as a party thriving on illegal Bangladeshi vote banks in West Bengal.
Ernest Mawrie, BJP president Meghalaya while terming TMC only a “Bengal based party” said, “It will try and polarize the vote bank bringing in more Bangladeshis which West Bengal’s people have already faced. And people in Meghalaya don’t want that problem here so they will reject TMC also."
TMC, on the other hand, to shed the tag of a party supported by illegal Bangladeshi, has promised to resolve the demand for ILP in Meghalaya. It said that it would set up an expert committee to study and resolve the demand.
The Garo Hills, where the TMC is hopeful of making a mark, is bounded by the Mymensingh district a part of the Rangpur district of Bangladesh in the south, where a significant number of the Bengali population lives. The state has witnessed numerous clashes between the tribals and non-tribals. In 2020, a member of the Khasi Students’ Union got killed in a clash with non-tribals, a majority of which were Bengalis. In October last year, one person was arrested in connection with the assault on onlookers of the Bengali population during a rally of the Khasi - Jaintia and Garo groups.
While TMC is being portrayed as the party which has been encouraging illegal influx in West Bengal and will do so if came to power in Meghalaya, it was Mukul Sangma who brought the Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act 2016, during his second term to check illegal migration in the state. However, the BJP is terming the act something that ‘exists only on paper’.
Riya Sangma, BJP candidate for Jirang Constituency in Ri-Bhoi district during an election campaign has stated that TMC would lead more illegal Bangladeshi into the state if voted to power.
Talking to Outlook, Suni Bareh, TMC candidate from 6-Khliehriat Constituency in East Jaintia Hill said, “The NPP and the BJP are claiming that our party is banking on the vote bank of the illegal migrants. However, they are the ones which have implemented the Citizenship Amendment Act. So people are smart enough to know which party is banking on which vote bank.”
The incumbent NPP has also attacked TMC citing the example of Tripura where the indigenous tribes became a majority following the mass-scale influx of the Bengali population in the state.
Bajop Pyngrope, spokesperson of NPP has termed TMC’s contesting Meghalaya polls as a misadventure.
“It is a Bengal-based party which does not know anything about the state. We all have seen what happened in other states such as Tripura where people joined them initially and then left immediately after the election," he said.
