Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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Several calls for ethnicity-based States
The Centre’s move to scrap Article 370 and Article 35A and bifurcate Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories has fuelled statehood hopes in the northeast.
Several civil society and extremist groups have been fighting for the creation of ethnicity-based States or UTs in four of the six States protected under variants of Article 371 of the Constitution. These States are Arunachal Pradesh (371H), Assam (371B, for specific tribal areas), Manipur (371C), Mizoram (371G), Nagaland (371A), and Sikkim (371F). Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland are also protected under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation of 1873 that requires non-residents or outsiders to possess an inner-line permit to visit. On Monday, Assam’s Rajya Sabha member Biswajit Daimary demanded upgrading the Bodoland Territorial Council to a Union Territory. The development in Kashmir has also spurred the Bharatiya Gorkha Parishad (BGP) to renew its demand for Gorkhaland, comprising Darjeeling and parts of the Dooars area of northern West Bengal. “The BJP must now fulfil its promise, made in its election manifesto, of finding a permanent political solution for the Gorkhas in India,” the BGB said in a statement. The Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation, has also renewed its demand for the creation of the Frontier Nagaland State. Three of these four districts – Kiphire, Mon, Tuensang and Longleng – border Myanmar and are strategic for India.
