Mob attacks Meghalaya CM office in Tura, five police personnel injured

Five police personnel were injured after a mob threw stones at the Mini Secretariat in Meghalaya’s Tura on Monday night. The mob also set on fire a police vehicle and vandalised to two fire tenders, reported The Indian Express.

At the time of the attack, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma was holding a meeting with civil society groups of the Garo community who have been holding a hunger strike to demand that Tura be declared the state’s winter capital. At present, the state capital Shillong is located in East Khasi Hills district.

The chief minister had to stay inside the Mini Secretariat building for over an hour due to the violence.

After the violence, the Meghalaya government imposed a restriction on large gatherings in Tura under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. A complete curfew will be in place between 9 pm and 5 am.

Besides the demand for making Tura the winter capital, Garo civil society bodies have also raised the long pending matter of the “roster system” in job quotas, according to The Indian Express. In Meghalaya, 40% government jobs are reserved for both Khasis and Garos.

Last year, the Meghalaya High Court had directed implementation of the “roster system” to record the allocation of vacancies. Under this system, if vacancies reserved for Garos remain unfulfilled during a recruitment drive, applicants from other communities would be considered, and vice-versa, the court had said. However, the court did not clarify whether the rule would be implemented prospectively or retrospectively. Garo groups have been pressing for the latter.

“After the discussion was almost over, we heard sloganeering from outside,” Sangma said, according to NDTV. “I asked them not to create any scene out here. Their leaders [of the civil societies in talks] went outside to speak to the people. They came back and said they did not know who these people were, having never seen them before during the fasting protest.”