SHILLONG, MAY 5: Most of the top notch officers in the Meghalaya government seem to be in total disarray and confusion on whether to involve the headmen on various development works initiated by the state government as there is no direction to them from the state government “not to ask the assistance of the headmen” as per the Meghalaya high court justice SR Sen order.
In his order, Justice Sen directed the Meghalaya government that no assistance should be sought from the headmen as the headmen have no powers to issue any kind or certificates unless empowered by laws.
But the Meghalaya government seems to have overlooked issuing instruction to the officers of most of the departments to comply with the high court order except to the commissioners & secretaries of home, the District Council Affairs (DCA) departments and to the deputy commissioners of eleven districts.
Meghalaya law secretary LM Sangma was initially not forthcoming as to why the state government had not issued any circular to all the departments with instruction on the backdrop of Justice Sen order.
Sangma, firstly, claimed he had not received any such order to issue a circular to all the departments accusing reporters of acting like “inquiry officer” but instantly asked his staff to fish-out the ordered issued by the law department to the DCA, home department and the DCs and showed the instructions issued to these department.
Responding to a query as to why the same instruction was not issued to officers of other departments as there are many departments like Social Welfare, Border Area Development (BAD) Community & Rural Development (C&RD, Fisheries, Agriculture and Elections that have to seek assistance of the headmen in implementing its projects, Sangma said, “Ignorance of law is not an excuse, and the high court order is a law.”
Of course the direction issued to the deputy commissioners relates to the implementation of the MPLADS schemes that invariable need to assistance of the headmen.
However, another big question that has remained unanswered is as to how MLAs are going to implement the SDWP and CRRP schemes on the backdrop of the Meghalaya high court direction as traditionally and by practise these schemes have been implement after due consultations and approval of the headmen.-
