All Party Hill Leaders' Conference
The All Party Hill Leaders' Conference ( APHLC , "all-party conference of the leaders of the mountainous country") was a political party founded in 1960 in northeast India . She played an important role leading up to the founding of Meghalaya state in 1972 and for the first two decades thereafter.
history
After India's independence in 1947, the area of today's Meghalaya came to the province (from 1950 state) Assam . The newly formed state of Assam exhibited extraordinary ethnic heterogeneity. The Assamese in the narrower sense, who populated the relatively densely populated Brahmaputra plain (plains people) , only made up about 60 percent of the total population. In addition, there was a Bengali- speaking minority and numerous small, mostly Tibeto-Burmese peoples in the mountain regions (hills people) or the tribal areas. The fathers of the Indian constitution , which came into force in 1950, took this into account by granting the tribal areas special rights and limited self-government.
Dispute over the state language of Assam
Already early after independence, voices rose among the political leaders of Assam that Assamese should be made the generally binding and sole official language of the state. This demand was directed primarily against the presence of the Bengali language in Assam, perceived by many Assamese as threatening, which was increasingly intensified by the continuous influx of immigrants from West Bengal and Bangladesh. However, the representatives of the mountain peoples, who feared cultural marginalization, also spoke out against Assamese as the state language.
On April 22, 1960, the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC), the local leadership of the Congress Party in Assam, passed a resolution calling on Chief Minister Bimali Prasad Chaliha (Congress Party) to make Assamese the sole state language. As a result, a meeting of representatives of various hill tribes of Assam met in Tura on April 28, 1960 , which resolutely opposed the APCC resolution. Chief Minister Chaliha, who initially took a very moderate position on the language issue, could no longer avoid pressure from his own party and on June 3, 1960, announced in the Parliament of Assam that he would introduce a draft law in line with the ideas of the APCC. A conference convened in response to this, initially consisting of 106 delegates from the hill tribes, met on July 6, 1960 in Shillong . This date can be considered the founding date of the All Party Hill Leaders' Conference (APHLC). The conference spoke out unanimously against Assamese as the official language of Assam and appealed to the Chief Minister, the legislation shelved to put down. When the draft law on Assamese as the federal language was introduced into parliament on October 18, 1960, the representatives of the mountain peoples demonstratively left the meeting room.
On 16-18 In November 1960 the third conference of the mountain people's representatives took place. At this conference the APHLC unequivocally demanded for the first time the formation of a separate federal state ( Eastern Frontier State , " Eastern Frontier State ") from the tribal areas of Assam. The official language of this state would be English - until it was replaced by Hindi in the future. After the disputes threatened to escalate, the Indian central government stepped in. On November 24, 1960, a meeting took place between an APHLC delegation and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru . Nehru assured the APHLC representatives that Bengali, English and Hindi could continue to be used in official use. However, he rejected the formation of a separate (territorially unrelated) hill state of the tribal people of Assam, as he considered it to be unstable and economically viable. Compromise proposals by the central government were rejected by the APHLC, which continued to insist on its demand for a state of its own.
Developments from 1960 to 1972
In the parliamentary elections in India in 1962 and the parallel election of the parliament of Assam, the APHLC ran in the tribal areas and won 11 of the 105 seats in the parliament of Assam, as well as the Lok Sabha constituency 3-Autonomous Districts with a 61.8% majority .
In 1963, the representatives from the Mizo Hills for the most part split off from the APHLC and called for the formation of a separate federal state called 'Mizoram'. A major driving force behind this split was the Mizo National Front .
On October 4th and 5th, 1963, Nehru met again with the APHLC leaders. Nehru submitted a plan according to which the tribal areas of Assam should remain part of Assam, but should receive very extensive autonomy. They should be able to choose their administrative language themselves, their parliamentary representation in the Lok Sabha should be strengthened and arrangements for the representation of tribal peoples in the government of Assam should be made. The plan was welcomed by the APHLC but rejected by Chief Minister Chaliha and the Assam Congress party leadership, who argued that such extensive autonomy would lead to the state becoming dysfunctional.
The Indian government under Prime Minister Shastri , who has been in office since 1964, appointed a commission on March 16, 1965 to deal with the solution of this conflict. This so-called Pataskar Commission made various proposals, which were rejected by the APHLC. In the following years further options (federation within Assam etc.) were discussed, but none of them could be reached by consensus. In 1967 there was a new commission under Planning Minister Ashoka Mehta . The APHLC increased its public agitation. The question polarized the Indian political landscape. Parties in opposition to the Congress Party, such as Swatantra and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam , sided with the APHLC's positions.
On September 11, 1968, the Indian government under Indira Gandhi declared its intention to create a separate hill state from the tribal areas of Assam. The geographer SP Chatterjee suggested the name "Meghalaya" for the new state. On September 25, 1969, the Meghalayas Law (the 22nd amendment to the Constitution, Constitution (twenty-second Amendment) Bill ) was introduced into the Indian Parliament and passed by both Houses ( Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha ) on the same day . A follow-up law, the Assam Reorganization (Meghalaya) Bill, 1969 was passed on December 24, 1969 and became legally effective on December 29, 1969. The autonomous state of Meghalaya was officially inaugurated in Shillong on April 2, 1970 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Meghalaya was still part of Assam, but enjoyed extensive autonomy and had its own legislative assembly. In the newly elected Meghalayas Legislative Assembly, the APHSC had 34 MPs and the Congress Party 4. Three other members were appointed by the Governor. When the Indira Gandhi government announced on September 3, 1970 that the previous union territories of Manipur and Tripura were to be transformed into full-fledged states, the political leaders of the APHLC demanded that Meghalaya should also receive this status. On November 10, 1970, the Prime Minister issued a statement in which she promised Meghalaya state status.
With the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganization) Bill passed in December 1971 , Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura were elevated to federal states and the Mizo Hills and the area of the North-East Frontier Agency were transformed into the union territories of Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh .
Development after the founding of the state of Meghalaya in 1972
In the first election to the legislative assembly of the newly founded federal state, the APHLC achieved an absolute majority with 32 out of 60 electoral districts won. The APHLC politician Williamson A. Sangma became Meghalya's first Chief Minister . In the following years the APHLC fell into a crisis. With the achievement of the state of Meghalaya, the party's main political theme was lost. On August 19 and 20, 1976, an APHLC party conference discussed the question of whether the APHLC should join the Congress Party. As a result, the decision was made to remain independent, but to strengthen the friendly relations with the Congress. In November 1976, APHLC party president and chief minister Sangma announced that the congressional leadership had rejected the offer of friendly relations and insisted on full union. Sangma called an extraordinary party conference for November. This provoked numerous internal-party protests and calls for boycotts, as it was feared that the Chief Minister would attempt to join the Congress Party in a raid-like manner. It was requested that the conference be adjourned. Ultimately, however, the conference took place on November 16, 1976 and was attended by 81 of the 126 delegates. This conference voted unanimously in favor of joining the Congress Party and authorized the Chief Minister to negotiate the modalities for this. In November 1976, a large part of the APHLC, including Chief Minister Sangma, moved to the Congress Party.
Remaining opponents of the association continued to run the party, but it never regained its old strength. The APHLC subsequently provided the Chief Minister Meghalayas twice ( Darwin Diengdoh Pugh from March 10, 1978 to May 7, 1981 and BB Lyngdoh from March 2, 1983 to March 31, 1983), but then disappeared in the late 1980s political insignificance.
Election results
The following are the election results of the APHLC in the years 1962 to 1993 for elections in Assam and elections to the all-India parliament ( Lok Sabha ). The election results from 1988 onwards refer to the APHLC grouping under the leadership of Armison Marak.
| year | choice | be right | percent | Parliament seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1962 | General election in Assam 1962 | 134,591 | 5.51% |
11/105 |
| 1962 |
 Elected Lok Sabha in 1962
|
91,850 | 0.08% |
1/494 |
| 1967 | General election in Assam in 1967 | 108,447 | 3.49% |
9/126 |
| 1967 |
Elected Lok Sabha in 1967
|
112,492 | 0.08% |
1/520 |
| 1971 |
Elected Lok Sabha in 1971
|
90,772 | 0.06% |
1/518 |
| 1972 | General election in Meghalaya 1972 | 73,851 | 35.67% |
32/60 |
| 1978 | General election in Meghalaya 1978 | 94,362 | 24.92% |
16/60 |
| 1980 † |
Election to Lok Sabha 1980 †
|
13,058 | 0.01% |
0/529 |
| 1983 | General election in Meghalaya 1983 | 118,593 | 25.07% |
15/60 |
| 1988 | General election in Meghalaya in 1988 | 28,391 | 4.58% |
2/60 |
| 1993 | General election in Meghalaya 1993 | 64,603 | 7.93% |
3/60 |
† In the eastern constituency of Shillong of Meghalaya, no election took place in 1980 due to the Assam riots .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sixth Schedule Article 244 (2) and 275 (1): Provisions as to the Administration of Tribal Areas in the States of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Indian Ministry of Human Resources Development, accessed April 7, 2018 .
- ↑ a b Election Results - Full Statistical Reports. Indian Election Commission, accessed on March 29, 2018 (English, election results of all Indian elections to the Lok Sabha and the parliaments of the states since independence).
- ↑ Lyngdoh Nongbri, Radhon Singh: Government and politics in Meghalaya . Ed .: Gauhati University. June 30, 1976, Chapter 16: The All-Party Hill Leaders Conference: Its Birth and Its Role (English, online - dissertation).
- ↑ Lyngdoh Nongbri, Radhon Singh: Government and politics in Meghalaya . Ed .: Gauhati University. June 30, 1976, Chapter 17: The Commission on the hill areas of Assam (English, online - dissertation).
- ↑ a b Lyngdoh Nongbri, Radhon Singh: Government and politics in Meghalaya . Ed .: Gauhati University. June 30, 1976, Chapter 18: The Search for Alternative Formulas (English, online - Dissertation).
- ↑ Lyngdoh Nongbri, Radhon Singh: Government and politics in Meghalaya . Ed .: Gauhati University. June 30, 1976, Chapter 19: The Autonomous State of Meghalaya (English, online - dissertation).
- ↑ Goswami, PK: Supreme Court of India: All Party Hill Leaders' ... vs Captain MA Sangma & Ors on September 12, 1977. indiankanoon.org, September 12, 1977, accessed on March 30, 2018 (English, court judgment of Supreme Courts with a brief history of the APHLC).