SIKKIM POLITICS--- SIKKIM SUBJECT

Sikkim Subject :
You may bury an injustice but you can never kill an injustice.
Like Banquo’s ghost it will come back to haunt you till your death.

Today the term “Sikkim Subject” is being used to supposedly describe indigenous Sikkimese people .In fact the status is an absolute misnomer as the aforesaid “status” has been reinvented by a circuitous Sikkim government initiated ploy in 1989 to allow Nepalese of not known nationality who came to populate Sikkim after its merger with India in 1975 to become not only citizens of India but gain domicile status in the state of Sikkim.

Simultaneously the same central government directive by a sleight of hand allowed by this notification (obviously engineered by the state government) that all the old settlers of Sikkim other than Nepalese would be deprived of their constitutional right of domicile in the state as the rule allows only rural land owners to apply for Sikkim subject when the King’s laws specifically encouraged Indians to purchase land only in urban areas.

History.

The Sikkim Subject Regulations came into being in 1961 under the erstwhile King of Sikkim to stop the influx of Nepalese into his kingdom as they were posing a danger to the indigenous population. The regulations specifically allowed Sikkim subject status only to people settled in Sikkim for at least 14 years before promulgation i.e. 1961.
This law was specifically directed towards stopping Nepalese/Tibetan/Foreigners influx into Sikkim but has been construed today to deprive Indian people who have been in Sikkim for not 15 but 50 years before the act was extended in 1961.

This law also applied to all Nepalese/Tibetan immigrants and in fact even more so as they were also governed by the “Sikkim Work Permit Regulations” (till date in effect ) which further required that on entry into Sikkim they must be listed (unless they were Indians) and they were specifically were barred from any property rights in Sikkim.

Thus any entrants to Sikkim before 1974 must either be Indians or if they were stateless then they should have been registered under the work permit rules and there should be a record with the government of these people, and they alone if any, are entitled to Domicile status. All others must be considered as Foreigners without any rights.

In addition all Indians were protected by the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Sikkim and India. The treaty specifically recognized the reciprocal rights of Sikkimese and Indians to settle in, own property and engage in commerce in each others territory without any let or hindrance.
The treaty specifically granted to Indian Citizens all the rights of citizenship under the Sikkimese Government and the 1961 regulations acknowledged this fact by not requiring Indians to apply for the aforesaid “Subject Status” to avail of any protection under Sikkim’s laws as absolutely equal citizens.
In fact the Indian community as a whole were treated absoloutely equally by the ruler and his administration without any discrimination whatsoever vis-à-vis the indigenous people. After the ruler was deposed in 1975 both “Padma Vibhushan Kazi” and “N.B. Bhandari” administrations continued the equal treatment and in fact even the current administration more or less continued the same policies till the passing of the Finance Act 2008 when Mr.Chidambaran was inveigled into pronouncing on the term “Sikkimese” in the Union Budget.

This opened a “Pandora’s box” and the “Chamling” government quickly started expanding on the term (Sikkimese and “Sikkim Subject”) to deprive a communally sensitive minority of their rights in a blatant attempt to try and foist an ethnically Nepalese state on the Indian union. (The indigenous people are a fast reducing minority who will like the Parsees soon face extinction and all the other communities have been deprived of Domicile status by a spate of bills in the Sikkim Assembly which even deprive them of Basic Human rights.)

Thus all others in spite of living in Sikkim for more than a hundred years are now not “Sikkim Subjects” ------all state protection and avenues of advancement are barred to them. (No hospital treatment/no educational benefits/no trade licenses/ no part in any state sponsored activity.)

In actual fact the Nepalese of unknown status(stateless according to petition of the “Bhandari” government in the petitions committee of Rajya Sabha) were granted both Indian citizenship and by a convoluted operative portion of the directive also became “Sikkim Subject’s” although “Sikkim Subject status” was specifically repealed by the Central Government when Sikkim joined the Indian Union .There cannot legally be any recognition of any status beyond “Indian Citizen” or “State Domicile” as these are the only two recognized status for a citizen of India.

However cleverly the above ‘Sikkimese” status pronounced by Mr. Chidamabaran is now being used as a logic to bestow citizenship (central government’s prerogative) in the state of Sikkim. The “Chamling” Government has in effect allowed Stateless persons to acquire a status above the actual Domiciled people of the state—a special citizenship granted by the state government. Any special status for foreigner’s would certainly in years to come translate into a fertile ground for anti –India forces to claim and proclaim sovereignty and other such mischievous claims in Sikkim.

Conclusion.

The fate of Jammu after Prime Minister Pandit Nehru’s tribe were thrown out and where today no Indians are left to protect or project India’s claims will surely descend on Sikkim too.

The constitutional anarchy attempted by the ‘Chamling” government in trying to foist a Nepalese population as absolute rulers on the minority indigenous Sikkimese and their natural allies “The Old Sikkimese of other than Nepalese origins” must and will result in the fall of the government for unconstitutional practices as soon as the central government or the Supreme court applies its mind to the subject as at the least basic protection under Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution of India have been blatantly flouted.