BJP Condemns Alleged Misuse of Tribal Rights in Meghalaya’s Garo Hills
The Bharatiya Janata Party has condemned what it called the misuse, conversion and exploitation of constitutional protections granted to tribal communities in Meghalaya’s Garo Hills, arguing that unrest in the region was driven by attempts to enter elections meant to safeguard indigenous self-rule.
Senior BJP leader and MP Ravi Shankar Prasad made the charge at a press conference in New Delhi on March 13, 2026, days after violence in West Garo Hills left two people dead and forced the postponement of the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) elections. The party said it stood with the Garo tribal community and would oppose any effort to dilute rights guaranteed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.
The statement placed a local nomination dispute onto a national political stage. It also revived a longer argument over who may vote and contest in a council created to protect tribal land, custom and administration in a sensitive border region.
Why the Garo Hills council matters
The GHADC, headquartered in Tura, is one of Meghalaya’s three autonomous district councils. It covers the Garo Hills, an area of more than 10,000 square kilometres that includes hill tracts and a plains belt along the Bangladesh border. The council has 29 elected members and one nominated member. Under the Sixth Schedule, such bodies can make laws on land, forests, village administration, inheritance and social custom.
Unlike the Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills councils, which over time restricted participation more tightly to Scheduled Tribes, the GHADC historically allowed limited non-tribal participation. Under the Assam and Meghalaya Autonomous Districts (Constitution of District Councils) Rules, 1951, permanent residents who met residence conditions could vote. In practice, non-tribal contestation was concentrated in plains constituencies such as Phulbari, Rajabala and Mahendraganj. Two sitting members of the council were Bengali-origin Muslims.
For tribal organisations, that arrangement sat uneasily with the original purpose of the Sixth Schedule. Groups such as the Garo Students’ Union, the All A’chik Youth Federation and the Federation of Khasi Jaintia and Garo People argued that a council created to protect indigenous self-governance should not be open to non-tribal candidates. For long-settled non-tribal residents in the plains, the same arrangement was a matter of existing legal rights, representation and livelihood.
The notification that triggered the crisis
On February 9, 2026, the GHADC Executive Committee resolved that candidates must produce a Scheduled Tribe certificate to file nominations. A notification dated February 17 made that requirement compulsory. Supporters called it a long-pending correction. Critics said an executive order could not rewrite election qualifications that were governed by Rules 8 and 128 of the 1951 Rules.
The dispute moved quickly into the courts. Enamul Hoque, a voter from West Garo Hills, challenged the notification in the Meghalaya High Court. On March 10, Justice H.S. Thangkhiew quashed it. The court did not decide the larger political question of whether non-tribals should be kept out of the council. It held that the Executive Committee lacked the power to change eligibility by notification. Any such change, the court said, had to follow Rule 72: draft rules, place them before the District Council in session, and obtain the Governor’s approval before they became law.
That legal finding arrived in the middle of nomination week. It did not settle tempers on the ground.
Violence around nominations
On March 9, the first day of nomination filing, former Phulbari MLA S.G. Esmatur Mominin and fellow aspirant Enamul Haque arrived at the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Tura to file papers, reportedly as Independents from the Phulbari belt. Pressure groups opposing non-tribal candidates gathered at the premises. Both men were allegedly assaulted. Police took them into protective custody and later shifted them to Tura Civil Hospital.
Mominin, a former legislator later associated with the Trinamool Congress in BJP statements, had already been criticised by tribal organisations for rejecting the ST-certificate requirement. After the Tura incident, protests spread. In Chibinang, clashes turned deadly when police opened fire. Two people were killed. Arson and assaults were reported in parts of West Garo Hills, including around Tura. Curfew was imposed and the Army was deployed.
The Meghalaya government postponed the April 10 GHADC elections and later extended the council’s term by six months, until mid-October, to allow time for rule changes and the restoration of order.
What the BJP alleged
Prasad said the root of the tension was not merely a nomination quarrel. He described the GHADC as an autonomous body whose administration should rest with certified Adivasis. He alleged that illegal immigrants from Bangladesh had entered local tribal society and were trying to contest council elections.
The BJP leader claimed a pattern similar, in the party’s telling, to practices alleged in parts of West Bengal and Jharkhand: outsiders marrying tribal women, obtaining certificates, later separating, and then using those documents to claim reserved political and land rights. He cited Mominin’s nomination as the latest example.
“The BJP condemns the misuse, conversion and exploitation of the constitutional rights of tribals in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, who are protected under the Constitution,” Prasad said. He argued that demographic change in the plains was affecting tribal land, political representation and governance in a border region.
The BJP’s official talking points went further, calling the episode a conspiracy by non-tribal illegal immigrants to usurp indigenous rights and demanding strict action against those it accused of inflaming violence. Meghalaya BJP president Rikman G. Momin led a delegation to Governor C.H. Vijayashankar seeking amendments to the 1951 Rules so that only Indian citizens belonging to Meghalaya’s Scheduled Tribes could vote or contest GHADC elections.
These are political allegations. Courts in the March litigation confined themselves to procedure. They did not examine immigration claims, individual certificates, or the personal status of particular candidates.
A legal route after the court setback
The High Court order did not end the demand for a tribal-only council. It forced the process onto the path the judges had outlined. Later in March, the GHADC passed an amendment to the 1951 Rules making an ST certificate mandatory for candidates. Governor Vijayashankar approved the change. Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma called it an important decision and said district councils were traditionally meant for the tribals of the region, a demand pending for decades since the council’s formation in 1952.
That later approval is the institutional sequel to the crisis that the BJP addressed in mid-March. It shows how the conflict moved from street protest and an invalid executive notification to a formal rule change.
The argument that remains
The Garo Hills dispute is not only about one nomination or one press conference. It sits at the junction of three pressures that have shaped Meghalaya politics for years: Sixth Schedule autonomy, the mixed demography of the plains belt, and fears of land alienation.
Tribal groups see open seats as a slow erosion of a safeguard written into the Constitution after Independence. They point to land, custom and political control as the core of that safeguard. Permanent non-tribal residents, especially in constituencies that have long returned non-tribal members, argue that residence, existing rules and democratic representation cannot be wished away by mobilisation alone.
The BJP framed the March violence as proof that infiltration and fraudulent access to tribal rights were destabilising the region. Local organisations framed it as a defence of indigenous institutions. The High Court framed the first notification as a failure of procedure. The later Governor-approved amendment showed that the political majority in the council and the state wanted the eligibility bar written into the rules themselves.
What began as a fight over nomination papers therefore became a test of how Meghalaya interprets the Sixth Schedule in a border district: as a closed tribal legislature, or as an autonomous body that still has to accommodate communities that have lived in the plains for generations. The BJP’s condemnation made the party’s answer clear. The deeper contest over land, identity and representation in the Garo Hills did not end with that statement.
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