Our Correspondent
Wokha, June 22 (EMN): The district administration of Wokha has clarified on Friday the allegations that it was imposing ‘petty fines’ on apprehended Inner Line Permit (ILP) offenders. The allegations were published in the local media on June 21.
To the allegations, from the Lotha Student’s Union’s ILP cell, the sub-divisional officer (civil) of Wokha district Lanusenla Longkumer clarified that the administration was not aware that any fine was being imposed except by the court. The standard procedure was followed, the officer said. After receiving the alleged ILP offenders the police forwarded them to the legal authority. No fine was imposed by the administration, but imposed by the court, Longkumer clarified.
The Wokha police station also clarified that out of nine people, two were released after finding that they possessed ILP. Another person was released after noting a receipt of the ILP application, understood to be his. The remaining six persons after learning they possessed proper documents but without ILP were ordered by the court to apply ILP within seven days.
During a telephonic conversation with this reporter, Extra Additional Commissioner (judicial) Imliakum also clarified that the matter was handled as procedures demanded and an order passed as was done in previous cases. The SDO (c), Wokha’s ILP in-charge, explained the standard procedure: Arrested ILP offenders are to be deported within seven days.However, she lamented that currently there are no ‘clear cut directions’ regarding administering the logistics and the finances involved in such a measure.
On being queried about maintaining records of ILP registrations and issuances, Longkumer said it is being done through an online web portal managed by another department. Currently though, she said, there seems to be some issues with the portal including it not being very user-friendly and that it lacks capabilitiy to extract exact data. Further, it is currently unable to clearly display valid and expired ILP holders, it was informed. Likewise, the administrator said manual compilation of ILP records could not be done too due to the recent back-to-back elections namely, the state assembly elections and the Lok Sabha by-election. The process of manual compilation could start only recently, it was informed.
