Thursday, August 2, 2012

Families without COIs; who is to blame?


Letter:
After going through reports on newspapers and social networking sites, I couldn’t help but visit the Biswakarma family of Rakdong-Tintek, East Sikkim. While interacting with family members I found the reports were true and that the family members did not have Certificates of Identification and only possess proof of ‘Dhuri Khazana Reciept’ dating back to 1952-53. I also found that they do enjoy the right to vote as well as BPL facilities. Thanks to the panchayats of Rakdong-Tintek, they have been provided with some other facilities like GCI sheet, cutting and tailoring training, etc. The family is thankful to the area MLA for his moral and financial support during bad times.
Despite having proof of ‘Dhuri Khazana Reciept’, BPL card, Voters ID card, why do they still not possess Certificates of Identification? Speaking to some officers of the concerned department and lawyers I found that according to the Sikkim Subjects Regulation Act 1961, one has to fulfil one of the three criteria mentioned here: record of fore father in Sikkim Subject Register with vide serial number and volume number; landed property details with vide plot number; regular service in Government of Sikkim. Unfortunately, the Biswakarma family fail to fulfil any of these criteria.
It is very easy to blame the Government or anyone else for anything wrong that happens. There are thousands of families residing in Sikkim facing the same problem as the Biswakarma family. We should be thankful to the government for providing equal facilities to this family even when they do not have COIs.
As we all know, one of the policies of this government is to ensure that facilities provided to COI holders should also be extended to those without COIs. Here a question that comes to my mind is why can’t the writer who brought up this issue also come up with a suitable solution?
Why are they only part of a problem and not part of the solution? Does the responsibility of solving the Biswakarma family’s problem lie only with the government or area MLA or panchayat or concerned department?

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