SHILLONG, JUL 3: The banned Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) on Friday rejected the justification offered by Voice of the People Party (VPP) president Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit for the Khasi Hills Autonomous District (Regulation and Administration of Land) (Amendment) Bill, 2026, calling it “centralization of land governance under the guise of solving landlessness.”
“By relying on the 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC), which claims that around 76 percent of households in Meghalaya own no private land, he seeks to justify stripping the Dorbar Shnong and Hima of their customary authority while concentrating unprecedented powers in the Executive Committee (EC),” HNLC general secretary Saińkupar Nongtraw said in a statement.
“This is not genuine land reform. It is the centralization of land governance under the guise of solving landlessness.”
Questioning the use of state-wide data for a Khasi Hills-specific law, Nongtraw said: “The justification collapses upon closer examination. The much publicized claim that 76 percent of households own no private land is a Meghalaya wide figure covering Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills alike. Yet this amendment applies only to the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council.” “If the alleged crisis is truly a statewide problem, why is only Khasi Hills being subjected to this sweeping transfer of land powers?” he said. “Before proposing such a drastic amendment, KHADC should have produced district specific evidence demonstrating that Khasi Hills faces a unique problem requiring this extraordinary legislation. A Meghalaya wide statistic cannot be used to justify a Khasi Hills specific law.” The outfit said Basaiawmoit, as an MLA and not an MDC, should raise the issue in the Assembly.
“If Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit wishes to defend the 76 percent statistic in his capacity as an MLA, that is a matter for the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly. However, he is neither a member of KHADC nor an MDC,” Nongtraw said. “It is for the elected MDCs of KHADC to independently examine the evidence instead of adopting a Meghalaya wide statistic without first demanding Khasi Hills specific data,” he said.
“Their responsibility is to protect the interests of the people of Khasi Hills through informed legislation based on facts, not assumptions.”
Terming the landless figure misleading, the HNLC said: “The so called 76 percent landless claim is itself misleading. Under the Hynniewtrep customary system, the absence of an individual title deed does not necessarily mean a person is landless.”
“For generations our people have lived, cultivated and inherited rights over Raid and Hima land through customary institutions and community ownership rather than colonial style private titles,” Nongtraw said.
“Equating the absence of private title with landlessness imposes an alien concept upon Hynniewtrep society and then uses that distorted conclusion to justify weakening the very institutions that have safeguarded our ancestral lands for centuries.”
He added: “If 76 percent of households in Meghalaya truly own no land, it is worth asking why 88.5 percent of rural households in this state own the very houses they live in. A household cannot build and own a house on land it does not occupy. The contradiction reveals the flaw in the instrument, not in our people.”
“The SECC was designed to measure private, individually titled land ownership, a colonial-style methodology that was never built to recognize Raid, Hima or community land as a form of ownership at all,” he said.
“When that instrument is applied to a Hynniewtrep land system built on customary, communal tenure, it does not find landlessness. It finds its own blind spot, and mislabels it landlessness.”
“Ardent Miller Basaiawmoit is now using that blind spot as the justification for dismantling the very institutions the census was never able to see in the first place,” Nongtraw said. “He repeated the same 76 percent figure again just six days ago while personally defending this Bill, proof that this is not an isolated statistic cited once in passing, but the load bearing pillar of his entire case for centralizing land power.”
On claims of Raid and Hima land being sold, the HNLC said: “Should the Executive Committee shift its defense from statistics to anecdote, citing figures on acres of Raid or Hima land allegedly sold to outsiders, that shift does not rescue the case for centralization either.” “Claims of land sold ‘it has been learnt’ are no more district specific, and considerably less verified, than the SECC figure itself,” Nongtraw said.
“If land is genuinely being alienated at the scale being suggested, the proper response is not to hand the Executive Committee first and final say over every future transaction.” “It is to investigate and publish exactly which Raid and Hima lands were sold, to whom, through whose signature, and to hold that specific Syiem, Rangbah Shnong or official accountable through the very tribunal this Bill fails to create,” he said.
“An unverified number is not evidence of a systemic failure requiring centralized control. It is, at most, evidence of individual wrongdoing requiring individual accountability.”
Rejecting the EC’s argument on concentration of power, he said: “The Executive Committee argues that too much authority is concentrated in the hands of a few Syiems and Rangbah Shnongs and that this has contributed to landlessness. Even if that argument is accepted for the sake of discussion, the logical solution is to make those institutions more transparent and accountable, not to transfer even greater powers to another small group, namely the Executive Committee.” “Concentrating power in one place to solve the problem of concentrated power is a contradiction,” he said.
Nongtraw said the amendment weakens existing safeguards. “Under the existing law, Section 16 required the Executive Committee to consult the concerned Dorbar Shnong, Dorbar Raid and Dorbar Hima before issuing notifications. The amendment removes this mandatory consultation and weakens one of the few statutory safeguards protecting customary participation,” he said.
“If one locked door has a faulty key, you do not hand the master key to a single man and call it security. You repair the lock,” he said. “You do not surrender every door in the house because one lock failed, and you certainly do not hand that master key to the very Committee now asking you to trust it with everything you have left.” “That is exactly what this Bill does. It takes a problem of accountability and answers it with a problem of power,” he said.
“Every centralizing bill in history has justified itself the same way, as protection first, before it revealed itself as capture. This one is no different.”
The HNLC suggested alternatives. “If landlessness among the Hynniewtrep people is genuinely a concern, then the answer is accountability, transparency and stronger protection of community land,” Nongtraw said. “Every land transaction should be recorded in a transparent public registry. Every Syiem, Rangbah Shnong or public official found abusing community land should answer before an independent tribunal or the District Council Court.”
“Decisions affecting community land should continue to involve the Dorbar Shnong, Dorbar Raid and Dorbar Hima so that no individual or political office can exercise unchecked authority over ancestral land,” he said.
“The KHADC Land Amendment Bill, 2026, does not address the real causes of land insecurity. It exploits the concerns of the landless to justify one of the greatest concentrations of land authority in recent history,” he said.
“It replaces local accountability with centralized political control and removes an important safeguard that required consultation with customary institutions.”
Calling for unity, he said: “Every Hima, every Syiem, every Doloi, every Wahadadar, every Sordar and every Rangbah Shnong must stand united and, more importantly, get organized in defence of our ancestral land and customary institutions. People who come together only in anger are easily divided once the crisis passes, but an organized people cannot be easily manipulated, bought, or broken. An organized people are far stronger than an angry crowd.”
“The HNLC therefore calls upon the Executive Committee to immediately withdraw the Khasi Hills Autonomous District (Regulation and Administration of Land) (Amendment) Bill, 2026,” Nongtraw said. “Should the Executive Committee refuse to do so, the Governor of Meghalaya must withhold assent in order to protect the customary land rights guaranteed under the Sixth Schedule.”
“The future of the Hynniewtrep homeland must not be determined through the concentration of power in a single political authority,” he said.
“Genuine reform strengthens accountability while preserving customary institutions. This Bill weakens accountability while centralizing power, and for that reason it should be rejected.”
By Our Reporter
