Dimapur, March 1 (MExN): A village council in Kohima today advised the government against holding elections to the Kohima Municipal Council until the 33% reservation for women is revoked. The village organization, Kohima Village Council, issued a note today claiming that the women reservation Act can ‘destroy the Naga society.’
The council is said to have met on February 29 to deliberate on the 33% reservation for women. The village council has “out rightly” rejected it on the claim that it “goes against our traditions and culture. The council’s note did not say what “tradition and culture” that the reservation was violating or going “against.”
“It is imperative and duty bound on the part of KVC to give a clarion call that under any circumstances the Kohima Municipal Council election shall not be held till reservation is revoked,” the Kohima village organization said.
The council asserted that the “there are certain issues in which the people should be taken into confidence and be consulted since the land and its resources belong to the people and not government.”
The council claimed that the reservation itself is “discrimination” and thus “depriving the democratic rights of the men folk in their own ancestral land which was earned from time immemorial through bloodshed.” If reservation is to be introduced, the council said, it should be implemented “from top to bottom” and “not from bottom to top.” Implementation should begin with the election to the MLA and members of the Parliament before it is enforced “in the grass root levels.”
The council has appealed to the government to “uphold” Article 371 (A) which has been provided “at the same time to revoke the act “at the earliest before it destroys the very fabric of the Naga society.”
