GUWAHATI: Two Nepali speaking Congress (I) leaders from the North East have demanded that minority status be accorded to the Indian Nepali community. They have also voiced their opposition to the conditional recruitment of Nepalese citizens in the Indian Army. Instead, they favor representation for Nepali residents in the country.
Sikim PCC (I) President A.K.Sabha and the Congress (I) MP from Tezpur (Assam), Swarup Upardhaya in a recent letter to Prime Minister P.V.Narsimha Rao, has also sought better representation in different national force.
The letter states, “Since independence, this backward and scattered community has never been represented at the national level in Congress, except once when Theodore Manjan was given some responsibility, in the AICC.
In government we have remained unrepresented. In so large a population as India’s numerically small community will be nowhere if due representation is not given to it.
The two Congress (I) leaders, in what appeared to be an attempt to bring the Indian Nepal’s out of the tussle between Sikhkim Chief Minister N.B.Bhandariand GNLF Subhash Ghising into a new slot, urged the Prime Minister to declare the community a minority and extend to it all associated benefits,
They said that only Indian Gorkhas should be recruited to the forces in view of the acute unemployment.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 5, 1992
