The United Democratic Party (UDP) on Friday submitted its eight observations on the state reservation policy to the committee of all political parties headed by Ampareen Lyngdoh.
Speaking to reporters, UDP general secretary Jemino Mawthoh said the party has come up with eight observations after 14 meetings were held with legal experts and academicians to deliberate on this contentious issue.
“We have submitted these eight observations to the committee headed by Ampareen as we want the government and the expert committee to examine them thoroughly so that it will be for the benefit of the people of the state,” he said.
He said, “Our observations will be non-discriminatory and acceptable to all the reserved categories in the state of Meghalaya.”
“We have been living together with the Garos for the last fifty one years. We have shared a lot of things with the Garos in the state of Meghalaya so that mutual respect is there. We feel that in the best interest of both the communities, we have to come up with a come up with the formula that will that will be acceptable to three major tribes in the state of Meghalaya,” he said.
Asked, the UDP leader said, “We had wanted to make it public, for us it is not a problem is not an issue but as requested by the Chairperson of the committee maybe for now because that has to be pass on to the Expert Committee and then until then.”
“…she (Lyngdoh) was quite happy because the UDP is the only party now which has submitted these observations. So she only said that on the basis on these observations at least we can have deliberations on the points that we have raised because if we do not give our observations, what is there to talk about. Right or wrong we don’t know but at least we thought that what we have given on our part are the best suggestions, so far,” he said.