• NET Web Desk

The Supreme Court of India has accepted a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the Delimitation Demand Committee for the North Eastern states (DDCNE) – Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Manipur.

According to a statement released by the DDCNE, the apex court on July 25, 2022 issued a notice, seeking directive to conduct delimitation exercise in the four northeastern states, in accordance with the Representation of People’s Act, 1950.

A presidential order dated February 28, 2020 had allowed conducting the delimitation exercise in the four states and subsequently, the Government of India constituted a delimitation commission for the purpose of delimitation of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in the Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir and the states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland.

The central government appointed retired Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai as the chairperson but the exercise was restricted only to Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

Relying on the said order, DDCNE submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister of India for the implementation of the Delimitation Act, 2002 in these four states in 2021 and 2022 but no response was received.

“It has been already two decades since the Delimitation Act, 2002 was amended and no delimitation exercises have been conducted in the four North-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland nor under Section 8A of the Representation of Peoples Act in the name of law-and-order problems,” – the statement further reads.

“Therefore, the people of the four NE states have exhausted all available remedies as all our petitions and memorandums to the authorities concerned have fallen on deaf ears. Our only available hope is now to knock on the door of the court to deliver justice to the people of these four NE states as all other government machineries have failed to do so. Hence, the filing of PIL in the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India,” the statement concluded.