NRC in Assam: Call for Inner Line Permit grows in North East as local groups launch drives to keep 'migrants' out

A day after the publication of NRC final draft, NGOs in states neighbouring Assam launched drives to check illegal migration to their state. In Meghalaya, non-tribal travellers were harassed at infiltration check posts, in Manipur groups attacked non-local vendors The publication of the final NRC draft in Assam has once again brought to fore how sensitive the Northeastern states of India are to the problem of illegal migration, and that they consider migration a grave threat to the identity and political rights of the ethnic groups residing in the region. Contrary to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s high-decibel rhetoric that the NRC update was a ploy of the BJP government in Assam to drive the Bengalis out of the state, indigenous apolitical and political organisations in neighbouring Northeastern states of Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur which share boundaries with Assam, raised the alarm that those left out of the final NRC draft would flock to their states to avoid detection and deportation in Assam. The Tribes Council has mooted creation of a separate cell to monitor infiltration of illegal migrants from or through Assam as the states shares a virtually porous inter-state boundary with Assam given that it is not possible for the police administration in the state alone to strictly enforce the Inner Line Permit system.