The Mizoram Maintenance of Household Registers Bill, 2019 was passed unanimously in the Assembly session on Monday. The bill proposes to maintain household registers for every family in the state of Mizoram.
The household register will be maintained by designated officials as well as village councils, municipal bodies and town committees.
The government will be partnering with the NGO’s to put this bill into effect with the information of the household registers being counter signed by the President of the Local Branch of the state level NGO.
The registers which will be updated every three months will have two categories, one for citizen residents and one for non-citizen residents of the village.
Here citizen is defined as the person registered as such or having requisite qualification as prescribed under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
Stating the reason for introducing the bill, the chief minister Zoramthanga said, “Influx of foreigners into Mizoram through its porous borders has remained a serious concern for several decades. In many cases the benefits of development and welfare programmes are found eaten away to a large extent by such foreigners who clandestinely stayed back and go assimilated to the people of the State by taking advantage of the mistaken identity and of difficulties in detecting them.”
The Chief Minister stated that the large scale of influx and assimilation has resulted in ‘an abnormal increase in the population, which also poses a serious threat to law and order and internal security of the State.’
The house members expressed their support for the bill with the Lunglei North MLA, Vanlaltanpuia saying he believes the bill could protect the state to a certain extent against the dangers of the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
However, the opposition MLA, Vanlalhlana suggested some improvements saying the bill has not stressed enough on foreigner detection.
The state of Mizoram shares international borders of around 700 km with Myanmar and Bangladesh.