Shillong: The Hynñiewtrep Integrated Territorial Organisation (HITO) fired an open letter at Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma and the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly on August 19. They want a firm guarantee that the move to ban uranium mining avoids the scrap heap of past, ignored policy decisions. The group claims local lawmakers have a habit of letting major resolutions gather dust.
HITO pointed to a pattern of neglect. They highlighted failed follow-through on coal mining in 2015, forest conservation mandates from 2000 to 2017, the push for Khasi language recognition, and the 2019 Inner Line Permit. Officials pass these laws with high energy but fail to fight for them later. “Meghalaya cannot afford a culture in which resolutions are passed with conviction inside the Assembly and then pursued with hesitation outside it,” the group stated.
Accountability is the goal. HITO proposed a seven-point roadmap to turn talk into hard results. They want the state to formally send resolutions to the Union Government, demand written status updates, and enforce a three-to-four-month deadline for central responses. Furthermore, the state must release regular public reports on these issues.
The organization threw down a gauntlet for elected officials. They insisted that representatives put the state before party lines. If the central government continues to ignore the will of Meghalaya, HITO suggested that MLAs should resign in protest. They view this as a basic matter of political morality. Lawmakers must now prove that their assembly floor votes represent genuine courage rather than just piles of useless paper.
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