To,

Dr. Neiphiu Rio,

Hon’ble Chief Minister,

Government of Nagaland,

Kohima.

 

Ref. No. NSF/ILRC/REP-CM01/2026                                  Dated Kohima, 01^st October, 2026

 

Sub: Consolidated recommendations arising out of the Two-Day National Seminar on the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, held at the Town Hall, Dimapur, on the 28^th and 29^th August 2026, and representation for the constitution by law of an autonomous Nagaland Inner Line Regulation Commission and for allied measures for the enforcement of the Regulation.

Sir,

On the 29^th August 2026, at the Town Hall, Dimapur, we had the privilege of placing before you a representation carrying a single demand — that the Government of Nagaland constitute, by law, an autonomous Nagaland Inner Line Regulation Commission vested with full power to frame rules and to take the decisions necessary for a robust, smooth and balanced implementation of the Inner Line Pass system. We said on that occasion that the remaining recommendations would follow upon the summing up and compilation of the seminar proceedings. In our valedictory address we undertook, before that gathering, that the recommendations emerging from those two days would be placed before the Government. This representation is the discharge of that undertaking.

It is not a restatement of the single demand. It is the consolidated case, and it rests upon five bodies of material:

(a)     the papers, deliberations and rapporteurs’ record of the two-day National Seminar, including the comparative studies of enforcement in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Mizoram presented by Prof. Nani Bath, Prof. (Dr.) Ch. Priyoranjan Singh and Prof. Lallianchhunga respectively, and the constitutional papers of Eno Prashant Bhushan, Enoli Shomona Khanna and Prof. Shantanu Chakravarty;

(b)     the replies received to our applications under the Right to Information Act, 2005, dated the 11^th and 12^th May 2026, addressed to the Home Department and to all seventeen district administrations of the State, read together with the replies to our earlier applications of August 2025 — sixty-seven documents running to one thousand four hundred and ninety pages.

(c)     the reports and recommendations of the Government’s own committees of 2007, 2015, 2017 and 2018, and the decision of the Cabinet of the 14^th May 2025;

(d)     the judgment of the Hon’ble Gauhati High Court delivered on the 16^th June 2026 upholding the extension of the Inner Line to the districts of Dimapur, Chümoukedima and Niuland; and

(e)     the record of this Federation’s engagement with successive Governments of Nagaland upon this subject from 1979 onward, beginning with the resolution of our emergent meeting of the 20^th December 1979 and the reply of the then Chief Minister of the 26^th January 1980.

We are conscious that the Government has heard a great deal upon this subject and has acted upon very little of it. We have therefore written this representation so that it may be acted upon rather than acknowledged. Every prayer in Part IV states what is to be done, by whom, and under which provision of law. Where a measure requires nothing beyond an executive instruction, we have said so. Where it requires an amendment of the Regulation itself, we have said that also, and have not pretended otherwise.

PART I — THE LEGAL QUESTION IS SETTLED; WHAT REMAINS IS ADMINISTRATION

For many years the case against a rigorous Inner Line was put in constitutional terms: that the Regulation is a colonial relic, that it offends the freedom of movement, and that its extension to Dimapur was arbitrary. On the 16^th June 2026 the Hon’ble Gauhati High Court, sitting in a Division Bench presided over by the Hon’ble Chief Justice Ashutosh Kumar with the Hon’ble Justice Arun Dev Choudhury, dismissed the three public interest litigations brought against the extension — PIL No. 22 of 2025 and PIL No. 67 of 2025, and PIL No. 29 of 2025 filed by petitioners from Assam — and held, in substance:

—  that a law does not cease to be law merely by reason of its antiquity, so long as it continues in force under Article 372 of the Constitution;

—  that the notification of the 20^th September 2024 did not create the Inner Line system, the existence of which predates that notification by more than a century; and

—  that the Inner Line Pass is a regulatory mechanism and not an absolute prohibition upon movement or residence, and is saved as a reasonable restriction in the general public interest under Article 19(5).

That judgment closes a long argument. Your own observation at our seminar — that the Regulation is still required in Nagaland, but that we have to regulate it properly — states the position exactly. The question before the Government is no longer whether the Inner Line may lawfully be enforced. It is whether it is being enforced at all.

We record, in fairness, that the contrary view was heard at our seminar and was heard with respect. Eno Prashant Bhushan, Senior Advocate, questioned whether the protection of Naga culture necessarily requires restriction upon the entry of outsiders, and whether the system sits comfortably with Article 19. Enoli Shomona Khanna, Senior Advocate, addressing the same Article, took the view that the Inner Line Pass is defensible as a reasonable restriction under Article 19(5) for the protection of tribal populations and their resources, while cautioning against executive overreach in the determination of indigenous status. We invited both because we did not wish to convene a seminar that merely agreed with us. Our own position we stated there and restate here: the Inner Line Pass is a pass and not a permission; it is no barrier to any citizen of India; and no citizen of India holding valid and universally accepted documents ought to be refused one. What we ask for is not exclusion. It is a record.

PART II — WHAT THE REGULATION GIVES THE STATE, AND WHAT THE STATE HAS USED

 

The Regulation is commonly spoken of as though it were a thin instrument consisting of a pass and a fee. It is not. The following table sets out, provision by provision, what the Regulation places in the hands of the State Government, and the position disclosed by the record.

 

Provision	What it empowers the State Government to do	The position on the record
Section 2	To prescribe and from time to time alter the Inner Line, and to prohibit entry beyond it without a pass under the hand and seal of the chief executive officer of the district.	Used. Exercised on the 9th December 2019, the 20th June 2023 and the 20th September 2024, and upheld by the Hon’ble Gauhati High Court on the 16th June 2026.
Section 3	Penalty for going beyond the line without a pass: imprisonment which may extend to one year, a fine not exceeding Rs. 1,000, or both — as substituted by Regulation V of 1925 for the original Rs. 100 for a first offence and Rs. 500 for each subsequent offence.	Barely used. Fines reported across the whole State amount to a few tens of thousands of rupees. One removal is recorded upon the entire record furnished to us.
Section 4	To prescribe the form of pass for each district and to fix in that form such restrictions or conditions as the State Government deems fit, and to require dues and fees; breach of a condition carries the same penalty as Section 3.	Partly used. The consolidated guidelines of the 14th August 2025 fix categories, validity and fees. The power to attach enforceable conditions is scarcely used at all. This is the widest power the State holds under the Regulation.
Section 5	Confiscation of jungle produce and of specified articles found in the possession of a person convicted under the Regulation.	Not used. No instance appears in any material furnished to us.
Section 6	The chief executive officer of a district may, subject to the approval of the State Government, authorise by written instrument under his hand any public servant to arrest and produce any person found beyond the line without a pass, or any pass holder who has broken a condition of his pass.	Not used. No such instrument was produced by any office. This is why the Police, when they act, act under the general criminal law and not under the Regulation.
Section 7	No person not a native of the districts named in the preamble may acquire any interest in land or in the product of land beyond the Inner Line without the sanction of the State Government; any interest so acquired may be dealt with as the State Government directs.	Not used, and the most consequential omission upon this list. No sanctioning officer has been notified to our knowledge and no record of sanctions exists.
Section 11	Offences triable by Magistrates of the first or second class; offences bailable.	The class of Magistrate — Executive or Judicial — is unsettled in practice, which impedes prosecution.

 

Two observations follow from that table, and they are the foundation of everything we ask for below.

First, the Regulation is not a weak instrument. It is a strong instrument that has been put to one use only — the issue of passes and the collection of fees. Sections 5, 6 and 7, which are the provisions that give the Regulation its teeth, do not appear anywhere in the material furnished to us by any office of the State.

Second, the widest power the State holds under the Regulation is Section 4, which permits the State Government to fix, in the form of pass itself, “such restrictions or conditions as the State Government may deem fit”, breach of which is an offence. A very large part of what we pray for below requires no legislation whatever. It requires that this power be exercised.

PART III — WHAT THE RECORD DISCLOSES

On the 11^th and 12^th May 2026 we addressed applications under the Right to Information Act to the Home Department and to each of the seventeen district administrations of the State, each accompanied by an Indian Postal Order and dispatched by speed post. Nothing stated below is inferred beyond what an office has itself written. Where a figure is arithmetic rather than reported — a column total the office did not itself state — we say so at the point of use. Where a figure could not be read with confidence, we have left it out rather than estimate it.

Nine findings emerge. We set them out plainly, because we think the Government is better served by the position as it is than by the position as it is usually described.

Finding 1 — Detection carries no consequence

Enforcement is not dormant. It is unconsequential. On the 9^th June 2025, Zunheboto district recorded seventy-eight persons without a valid pass in a single day’s drive — thirteen in Zunheboto Town, twenty-one at Atoizu, forty-two at Akuluto, one each at Pughoboto and Aghunato — and returned Nil against persons fined, fines collected, deportations and pending cases in the very same reply. Chümoukedima reported one hundred and forty-six defaulters and stated, in terms, that no fine was collected because undertakings were taken instead, requiring the defaulter to apply for a pass within a stipulated period. In April 2026, following the Assam Assembly elections and the Mokokchung bye-election, the Nagaland Police checked more than nineteen hundred passes over two days and detected six hundred and forty-four defaulters — four hundred and thirty-six on the 10^th April and two hundred and eight on the 11^th April. The cases were forwarded to the district administrations. What became of them is not on any record available to us.

Against the whole of that, the fines actually reported across the State amount to Rs. 15,500 in Phek, Rs. 12,300 in Tseminyu, Rs. 5,000 in Meluri, and a scale of Rs. 300 to Rs. 1,000 by length of default in Mokokchung, which fined eighty-five persons in 2025. A system in which a defaulter is detected, recorded and released is not an enforcement system. It is a census of the people it has failed to remove.

Finding 2 — The State has closed its own check gates and cannot say what remains

Tuensang, Tseminyu, Meluri and Phek each state in terms that there exists no designated check gate or checking point within the district. Chümoukedima returned NIL. Zunheboto alone reported fifteen. Asked for a State-wide list of designated check gates with jurisdiction and manpower, the Home Department furnished an annexure that does not contain one.

The explanation is on the Government’s own file, enclosed by Phek. By letter No. CON-1/G/41/2011 of the 30^th September 2022, the Home Department, Political Branch, reported a review meeting on the closure of check gates in the State held on the 21^st September 2022 under the chairmanship of the Chief Secretary. That letter records that “as the number of check gates have come down generally across the State, there may be apprehension among the people that there could be intrusion of large number of people into the State because of insufficient checking”, and asks Deputy Commissioners to form checking teams of their own. The State closed the gates, recognised the apprehension that would follow, and transferred the burden to district officers who have neither the manpower nor a budget head for it.

We note the contrast drawn in Prof. Lallianchhunga’s paper. In Mizoram the Vairengte check post alone was issuing four to five thousand passes a month, and between January and July 2026 issued seventeen thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight; when the Sairang railway station opened on the 13^th September 2025, a permit counter opened with it and the Home Minister visited to inspect the verification system. Nagaland has an airport and a railway station at Dimapur and a permit counter at neither.

Finding 3 — The State’s reporting proforma is a sound form, returned empty

The State prescribes a seventeen-column fortnightly and monthly return requiring each district to report passes issued by category, defaulters in possession and on renewal, arrests, prosecutions, reason for arrest, deportations, illegal foreigners apprehended and penalised, and the amount collected. It is a good form. The bulk of the Home Department’s Annexure F, running to roughly seventy of its hundred pages and covering September 2024 to August 2025, consists of these returns submitted largely blank.

Phek furnishes the clearest illustration, and it is a serious one. That district enclosed forty-nine forwarding letters and seventy-two monthly return sheets covering all forty-eight months from June 2022 to May 2026 without a single gap — an administratively creditable record of submission. On every one of those seventy-two sheets, columns 9 to 16, being the entire block for defaulters, action taken and illegal foreigners, is struck through with dashes or left empty. Across forty-eight consecutive months of returns to the Commissioner, Phek records no defaulter, no arrest, no prosecution, no deportation and no illegal foreigner in any month whatever. The fifty-one persons detected, eighteen fined and Rs. 15,500 collected which the same office reports elsewhere in the same reply appear nowhere in those returns.

Finding 4 — Nine of seventeen districts furnished nothing, and four of them had furnished the same data upward

Dimapur, Kohima, Niuland, Wokha, Mon, Longleng, Shamator, Kiphire and Peren furnished nothing at all. That is a deemed refusal under Section 7(2) of the Right to Information Act.

The Home Department’s own Annexure F disposes of any suggestion that the information does not exist. It contains a January 2025 special-drive annexure from Niuland listing five dated drives and a printed total of one hundred and forty-four defaulters; a checking report from Kohima of the 23^rd May 2025 covering four named junctions and one hundred and ten persons checked; a four-team special verification drive report from Kiphire of the 4^th June 2025 covering construction sites, commercial establishments, petrol pumps, workshops, rented quarters and migrant lodgings from four in the morning until one in the afternoon; and a monthly inspection return from Wokha. Each of those districts told the Home Department what it was doing, and told the Federation nothing.

Finding 5 — There is no record of exit, and effectively no removal

A pass is issued for a stated purpose and a stated period. The system records the issue. It records nothing thereafter. There is no record of exit at any gate, no reporting obligation upon the holder on arrival in a permitted district, and no mechanism by which the expiry of a pass generates any consequence at all. Detection therefore depends entirely upon the chance of a drive.

Upon the whole of the record furnished to us, across nine offices and one thousand four hundred and ninety pages, there is exactly one removal: two men from Assam apprehended by Tuensang Police in the early hours of the 25^th July 2025 transporting live cattle without passes, ordered deported under police escort at the cost of the resident who engaged them. That order is, in its small way, a model — it is the only instance on the record in which detection, penalty, removal and recovery of cost were all completed. It stands alone.

Finding 6 — The revenue is not reconciled, and the State-wide figure is illegible upon the State’s own file

Since the migration to the online system, permit fees are credited directly to the Commissioner’s account and the districts no longer see them. The Deputy Commissioner, Mokokchung states this expressly. The consequence is that every district revenue figure for any period after that migration is an offline figure only. Chümoukedima’s Rs. 49,950 is the fee on one hundred and ninety-three offline permits; the fees upon the sixteen thousand two hundred and forty-nine online permits issued by that district between August 2025 and June 2026 never touched it.

The State-wide position ought therefore to be visible centrally. It is not. Annexure F contains, at its page 21, an ILP Progress Report for the period 1^st January 2025 to 31^st January 2026 whose printed total is forty thousand two hundred and eighty-three passes issued across the State in thirteen months, with Dimapur and Chümoukedima together accounting for roughly half. Immediately below it sits a table headed “ILP Revenue as on 31^st January 2026”. That table is a low-contrast screen capture and not a single figure upon it can be read. The State-wide revenue from the Inner Line Pass is, on the Government’s own file, illegible.

The district series that can be read run mostly downward, and steeply. Tuensang collected Rs. 30,27,400 between 2016 and April 2026, its annual take falling from Rs. 3,86,000 in 2017 to Rs. 1,27,600 in 2025. Zunheboto collected Rs. 19,41,562 over fourteen and a half years, peaking at Rs. 2,27,400 in 2015 and falling to Rs. 40,312 in 2024. Mokokchung’s series from 2003 to April 2026 totals Rs. 58,95,054. Phek alone runs the other way, collecting Rs. 1,24,100 in the first five months of 2026 against Rs. 1,41,550 in the whole of 2025. Neither the rise nor the fall has been explained to anyone, because nobody has been asked to explain it.

No office was able to state the head of account into which fines are deposited, save Meluri, which mentions deposit to the Government Treasury through the Treasury Office, Phek.

We add one observation, because it disposes of the only defence available. By its letter No. DITC/ILP/2018(Vol-II) of the 28^th May 2025, the Directorate of Information Technology and Communication informed the Government that “a dedicated bank account in the name of the Commissioner, Nagaland, has already been opened and is being integrated to the online ILP system for collection of ILP fees”. The account exists. The figure is therefore capable of being stated at any time. It has not been stated because no one has been required to state it.

Finding 7 — The figures furnished do not agree with one another

Five discrepancies stand upon the record as furnished, and each is the reporting authority’s own:

—  Zunheboto’s stated column of permits issued contradicts the sum of its own category columns by one thousand one hundred and eighty-four permits.

—  Tseminyu returns an identical figure of two hundred and forty-six for persons checked and for persons detected without a valid pass, which would mean that every person checked was a defaulter.

—  Meluri reports Rs. 5,000 in fines against eighteen defaulters at the rate of Rs. 500 which that office itself names, which would come to Rs. 9,000.

—  Phek’s fee table and Phek’s own monthly returns, produced by the same office on the same day against the same application, agree in no single year: 268 permits against 633 for 2023, 427 against 754 for 2024, 903 against 760 for 2025, and 454 against 391 for the first five months of 2026.

—  Tseminyu and Meluri both enclosed handwritten challans against named accused under Sections 3 and 4 of the Regulation, bearing dates in 2024 and 2025, while returning “Nil” against prosecutions and pending cases in the same reply.

We do not allege bad faith in any of this. We say something we think is worse: that no one in the chain is reading these returns, because if anyone were reading them these differences could not have survived.

Finding 8 — The one register we could read shows an inflow concentrated in origin and compressed in time

In answer to our application of August 2025, the Deputy Commissioner, Chümoukedima furnished seven category-wise registers of individual permit holders — eight thousand one hundred and forty-nine records, it discloses the following.

—  Origins are overwhelmingly Assamese and highly concentrated. Read by pincode, 82.8 per cent of all permits were issued to persons from Assam. Nagaon alone accounts for one thousand six hundred and seventy-six, Morigaon for one thousand and fifty-one, Hojai for seven hundred and ninety-nine, Barpeta for seven hundred and ninety-four and Karimganj for six hundred and eighty-one. Bihar is a distant second at seven hundred and eighty in total. This is not a broad national pattern of movement. It is a movement out of a handful of districts of central and southern Assam.

—  Labour dominates the category mix: four thousand six hundred and forty-three labourers, being fifty-seven per cent, against two thousand and fifty-two traders, nine hundred and twenty-four students, two hundred and seventy-seven technical consultants, one hundred and fifty-two teachers, ninety-eight priests and three business partners.

—  The issue pattern is the most striking feature and the least explained. Of the eight thousand one hundred and forty-nine permits, eight thousand one hundred and thirty-two were issued during 2025, and the months of June and July of that year alone account for six thousand one hundred and fifty-six of them — three quarters of everything in the registers. Issuance then falls to one thousand three hundred and eighty-eight in August and three hundred and sixty-four in September. Either the online rollout cleared a long accumulated backlog across two months, or these registers are not the continuous record they present themselves to be. On the face of the document supplied, one district issued passes at roughly a hundred a day through midsummer 2025.

—  The guarantor system, to its credit, shows no capture: one thousand six hundred and eighty distinct guarantors across the six thousand six hundred and ten records carrying a guarantor identifier, averaging 3.9 permits each, with a ceiling at ten plainly visible in the distribution and exactly two identifiers breaking it. But one thousand five hundred and thirty-nine of the eight thousand one hundred and forty-nine records carry no guarantor identifier at all.

Finding 9 — Four committees, four sets of recommendations, one Cabinet decision, and no directorate

The Government of Nagaland has examined this subject with care on four occasions and has acted upon none of them.

—  The committee under Shri Alemtemshi Jamir, IAS, constituted on the 14^th December 2007 to review the working of the pass system, became defunct without executing its terms of reference.

—  The committee under Shri Sentiyanger, IAS, constituted on the 6^th April 2015, found that implementation on the ground had not been properly enforced, warned that the demographic character of the State would change and that the indigenous inhabitants would be reduced to a minority as in Tripura, and recommended a dedicated special cell in every district headquarters, penalisation of defaulters including recovery of the cost of deportation from the guarantor, and extension of the pass regime to the whole of Dimapur district. Of those, only the last has been done, and it took four more years.

—  The committee under Shri Kesonyu Yhome, constituted on the 1^st May 2017 to study Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, returned the finding that has never been answered: that enforcement in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland is “facilitation”, and in Mizoram “regimental”. It recommended a permanent committee within the Home Department under an ex-officio chairman, a limit upon the number of pass holders per guarantor with an advance deposit, digitalisation, facilitation counters at Dimapur airport and railway station, antecedent verification through the police of the applicant’s home State, and a detention centre at Dimapur funded from processing fees.

—  The committee under Shri Abhishek Singh, constituted on the 21^st August 2018, recommended the Register of Indigenous Inhabitants of Nagaland, an information-technology based pass system with electronic authentication and automated check gates under closed-circuit surveillance, a permanent committee under the Home Department with district monitoring committees under the Deputy Commissioners, and — in terms — that departments issuing trade licences “will ensure that no Trade Licenses are issued to people beyond the period of validity of ILPs”.

On the 14^th May 2025 the Cabinet resolved upon a multi-departmental enforcement directorate for the Inner Line Pass, to be created without additional financial burden by way of new posts, together with computerised expiry tracking and centralised alerts of the kind in use in neighbouring States. We welcomed that decision publicly on the 15^th May 2025 and urged that it be carried through. Sixteen months later we are unable to find, in any reply from any office of the State, a notification constituting that directorate, a named officer heading it, a sanctioned strength or a budget head.

Our own Ten-Point Memorandum of the 10^th April 2025, vide No. NSF/ILRC/REP-01/2025, met the same fate in a particularly instructive way. It was referred by the Home Department to the Directorate of Information Technology and Communication, which replied on the 28^th May 2025 with a point-wise annexure. Five of our ten points — the centralised database, the sensitisation of implementing personnel, the payment gateway, the dedicated account and ease of issue — were answered, and answered substantially, because they were questions of software and could be. Against each of the remaining five — new and strengthened check points, a separate enforcement wing, scrutiny of the purpose of entry, severity of penalty and the discipline of renewal — the remarks column carries three words and nothing else: “Government of Nagaland.”

That is an accurate allocation of responsibility. It is not an answer. Those five are precisely the points that require enforcement rather than technology, and sixteen months later not one of them has been answered by the Government of Nagaland, to which the Directorate correctly referred them. We reiterate every one of them in Part IV below.

That is the heart of the matter. The problem in Nagaland has never been a shortage of good recommendations. It has been that the recommendations are received, praised and shelved. We ask the Government to break that pattern with this representation.

PART IV — OUR PRAYERS

We pray as follows. Against each prayer we have stated the instrument by which it may be effected.

1. The institution
2. Constitute the Nagaland Inner Line Regulation Commission by law.

That the Government of Nagaland bring before the Nagaland Legislative Assembly a Bill constituting an autonomous Nagaland Inner Line Regulation Commission as the single authority responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873, within the State. The fragmentation of responsibility across the Home Department, the Commissioner, seventeen district administrations, the Police, the municipal and town councils and the Land Revenue Department is not an incidental weakness of the present arrangement. It is the cause of every finding in Part III. We pray that the Commission be constituted with: a chairman of not less than the rank of Commissioner, or a retired Chief Secretary or Judge; members drawn from the Home Department, the Police, the Land Revenue Department and the municipal administration; not fewer than two members drawn from the apex tribal bodies and the recognised student organisations of the State; delegated authority to frame and revise the form of pass and the restrictions and conditions attaching to it under Section 4 of the Regulation; custody of the central register; power to call for returns from every district and to record the failure to furnish a return as an official lapse; and an annual report laid before the Legislative Assembly and published. [Instrument: State legislation.]

2. Pending that legislation, notify the enforcement directorate the Cabinet has already approved.

That within ninety days of this representation the Government notify the multi-departmental enforcement directorate resolved upon by the Cabinet on the 14^th May 2025, naming the officer who heads it, its sanctioned strength, the departments represented upon it and the budget head against which it is to function; and that the directorate so notified stand as the interim body until the Commission is constituted by law. [Instrument: executive notification. No new posts are required; the Cabinet decision itself was framed upon that footing.]

1. The record
2. Create a single central register of passes recording both entry and exit.

That a single real-time register of every pass issued in the State be maintained under the Commission, accessible to every Deputy Commissioner, every designated Police officer and every check gate, recording the holder, the category, the purpose, the districts to which the pass extends, the guarantor or employer, the date of entry, the date of expiry and the date of exit. The absence of any exit record is the single defect from which Findings 1 and 5 both proceed. [Instrument: executive instruction; the software already exists.]

4. Lay an annual Inner Line Return before the Legislative Assembly.

That the Government cause to be laid before the Assembly, and published, an annual return stating district-wise: passes issued by category; passes expired; passes extended; defaulters detected; defaulters fined and the amount; prosecutions launched and their outcome; removals effected; revenue collected and the head of account to which it was credited; and the expenditure incurred upon enforcement. [Instrument: executive decision.]

5. Direct that the existing proforma be completed.

That the Commissioner issue a direction to all Deputy Commissioners that the fortnightly and monthly returns already prescribed be completed in every column, and that the submission of a return with the defaulter, action-taken and illegal-foreigner columns struck through or left blank be treated as a lapse recordable against the officer submitting it. The State need not design a new reporting system. It needs the one it has to be filled in. [Instrument: executive instruction. Cost: nil.]

6. Publish the State-wide revenue, and reconcile the online and offline accounts.

That the Government publish the State-wide revenue from the Inner Line Pass for each of the last ten financial years, including a legible copy of the revenue table appearing at page 21 of Annexure F to the Home Department’s reply No. HOME/ILP-36/03/2026; that the online receipts credited to the Commissioner’s account be reconciled district-wise against the passes issued; and that the head of account into which fines are deposited be notified to every district. [Instrument: executive instruction.]

1. Enforcement
2. Restore and man the check gates, and publish the list.

That the Government publish a State-wide list of designated check gates and checking points with their jurisdiction, sanctioned manpower and hours of operation; that the closures effected before the review meeting of the 21^st September 2022 be revisited in the light of the extension of the Inner Line of the 20^th September 2024 and of the present volume of movement; and that pass-issuing and verification counters be established at the Dimapur Airport and at the Dimapur Railway Station. Both were recommended by the Kesonyu Committee in 2017 and by this Federation in April 2025. Mizoram opened a counter at Sairang on the day the railway station opened. [Instrument: executive notification and budgetary provision.]

8. Issue the authorisations under Section 6 of the Regulation.

That the Government accord its approval, and that every Deputy Commissioner thereupon issue written instruments under his hand under Section 6 of the Regulation, authorising Police officers of and above a named rank in his district to arrest and produce before him any person found beyond the Inner Line without a pass, or any pass holder who has committed an infraction of its conditions. At present the Police act, when they act, under the general criminal law, because no such instrument exists. This is the cheapest and the most consequential single measure in this representation. It requires a signature. [Instrument: written instruments under Section 6, with the approval of the State Government. Cost: nil.]

9. Settle the question of the Magistracy.

That the Government, in consultation with the Law and Justice Department, notify which class of Magistrate — Executive or Judicial — is the competent authority before whom offences under Sections 3 and 4 of the Regulation are to be laid, Section 11 providing only that such offences are triable by Magistrates of the first or second class and are bailable. The ambiguity is a substantial part of the reason why detection is not followed by prosecution. [Instrument: notification, with the concurrence of the High Court where required.]

10. End the practice of undertakings in lieu of penalty.

That the Commission, or pending its constitution the Commissioner, direct that no defaulter be released upon an undertaking to apply for a pass; that every detection be entered in the central register, disposed of according to law and reported; and that the disposal of every detection recorded during the drives of April 2026, in which six hundred and forty-four defaulters were detected in forty-eight hours, be called for and published. [Instrument: executive instruction.]

11. Build the machinery of removal.

That a holding facility be established at Dimapur for persons awaiting removal beyond the Inner Line; that the cost of removal be recovered from the guarantor or the employer, as was done in the Tuensang order of July 2025; and that the facility and the removals be funded from receipts under the Regulation. Recommended by the Sentiyanger Committee in 2015 and by the Kesonyu Committee in 2017. [Instrument: executive decision and budgetary provision.]

12. Move for the enhancement of the penalties.

That the Government initiate the amendment of Sections 3 and 4 of the Regulation to raise the maximum penalty. We state the position accurately: the original penalty of a fine not exceeding Rs. 100 for a first offence and Rs. 500 with imprisonment up to three months for each subsequent offence was substituted by Section 2 of Regulation V of 1925 with imprisonment which may extend to one year, a fine not exceeding one thousand rupees, or both. The present statutory ceiling is therefore Rs. 1,000 and one year. A fine of one thousand rupees fixed in 1925 is today no deterrent at all, and no notification under Section 4 can raise it, the ceiling being statutory. This is the one prayer in this representation that cannot be granted by executive instruction, and we do not pretend otherwise. We pray that the Government take the necessary steps, and in the meantime exercise Section 4 to attach conditions whose breach carries consequences the Regulation does permit — cancellation, debarment from reapplication for a stated period, and forfeiture of the guarantor’s deposit. [Instrument: amendment of the Regulation; interim measures by notification under Section 4.]

1. The economic linkage
2. Link the trade licence to the pass.

A person who overstays a pass suffers no consequence in the ordinary course of daily life. No trade, however, may be carried on without a licence, and no licence endures without periodic renewal. The licensing counter is therefore the single most effective point at which lawful presence may be verified, and it requires no new legislation — only the use of machinery that already exists in every municipal and town council of the State. Our enquiries with the Deputy Commissioners in respect of trade licences issued to non-indigenous traders have disclosed how difficult it presently is to reconcile the licensing record with the record of passes: the two are maintained separately, by authorities that do not speak to one another. We pray that the Government issue instructions to all trade licensing authorities, including the municipal and town councils and the district administrations, to the following effect:

(a)    that no trade licence be issued or renewed to a non-indigenous applicant except on production of a valid Inner Line Pass, the number and period of validity whereof shall be recorded upon the licence and in the licensing register;

(b)    that the validity of the licence shall not extend beyond the validity of the pass;

(c)    that the licence shall stand suspended upon the expiry or cancellation of the pass, until a valid pass is produced;

(d)    that every application shall declare the non-indigenous partners, employees and occupants of the licensed premises, together with the pass particulars of each, so that the requirement is not defeated by a licence held in the name of an indigenous person while the business is in truth carried on by another;

(e)    that the licensing register be reconciled periodically with the central register of passes, and the result of such reconciliation reported to the Commission; and

(f)     that a like linkage be examined in respect of tenancy and house-tax records, where the same difficulty arises.

We record that this is not a new proposal of ours. The Abhishek Singh Committee recommended in 2018, in terms, that departments issuing trade licences ensure that no trade licence is issued beyond the period of validity of the pass. We ask only that the Government’s own recommendation be given effect. It must be framed as a direction to licensing authorities grounded in the Regulation and in Article 371(A), and not as a fresh eligibility bar. [Instrument: executive instruction to licensing authorities.]

14. Give effect to Section 7 of the Regulation.

That the Government notify the officer appointed under Section 7 to grant or refuse sanction for the acquisition by a non-native of any interest in land or in the product of land beyond the Inner Line; that every sanction granted since the statehood of Nagaland be called for and published; and that the power under the same section to deal with any interest acquired without such sanction be exercised. Section 7 is the provision of the Regulation that speaks directly to the economic question, and it has not been used at all. [Instrument: notification under Section 7.]

15. Enforce and reconcile the registration of tenants.

That the requirement notified on the 14^th August 2025, that house owners register non-local tenants with the Village Council or the Police, be given a reporting line: that the registers so maintained be reconciled with the central register of passes, and that the failure of a house owner to register be attended with a stated consequence. A registration requirement with no reconciliation and no consequence will produce registers that no one reads, which is the difficulty described in Finding 3. [Instrument: executive instruction.]

16. Act upon the benami question.

That the Government cause an enquiry into businesses carried on within the State under the names of indigenous persons while in truth owned or operated by others, and that its findings be acted upon. We do not raise this on our own authority alone. You raised it yourself, Sir, from the dais at our seminar on the 29^th August 2026, and we ask that the observation be given effect. [Instrument: executive decision; the linkage at prayer 13(d) is the practical mechanism.]

1. The guarantor
2. Make the guarantor answerable.

That the form of pass prescribed under Section 4 require of every guarantor or employer a signed declaration of the particulars of the holder; that a ceiling be fixed upon the number of passes any one guarantor may stand for, with an advance deposit as recommended by the Kesonyu Committee; that a false declaration attract the penalty for breach of a condition of the pass, and forfeiture of the deposit; that no non-indigenous person stand as guarantor for another non-indigenous applicant; and that the employer bear the obligation to report the expiry of a pass and to secure the return of the holder beyond the Inner Line. We note that the registers of one district disclose one thousand five hundred and thirty-nine records with no guarantor identifier at all, and that a ceiling of ten appears to operate in practice without appearing in any notification we have seen. [Instrument: notification under Section 4.]

1. Nomenclature
2. Adopt the expression “Inner Line Pass” officially, in place of “Inner Line Permit”.

The parent Regulation does not use the word “permit”. Section 2 empowers the State Government to prohibit persons from going beyond the Inner Line “without a pass under the hand and seal of the chief executive officer of such district”. Section 3 provides the penalty where a person so prohibited “goes beyond such line without a pass”. Section 4 empowers the State Government to prescribe “a form of pass for each district”. “Permit” is a later administrative usage with no foundation in the Regulation.

The distinction is not merely one of words. A permit suggests a permission conferring standing upon its holder; a pass denotes conditional and time-bound entry, revocable upon breach of the conditions attached to it. The latter is what the Regulation provides for, and it is also the expression in ordinary use among our people. The continued official use of “permit” has, over time, encouraged the belief that the document confers a right to remain and to acquire interests within the State. We pray that the Government officially adopt the expression “Inner Line Pass” in all notifications, forms, registers, signage, online portals and official correspondence, and issue instructions to all departments and district administrations accordingly, amending the State’s rules and executive instructions where required. [Instrument: executive notification.]

1. Transparency
2. Publish the data, so that it need not be asked for.

That the Home Department publish under Section 4 of the Right to Information Act, on a quarterly basis and upon the State portal, the district-wise data on passes issued, defaulters detected, action taken and revenue collected. We would rather not spend the Federation’s means upon postal orders and speed post to obtain figures the State should publish of its own motion. [Instrument: executive decision.]

1. Capacity
2. Sensitise the officers who administer the Regulation, and give each district a cell.

That a structured programme of sensitisation upon the Regulation — its sections, its limits and its exemptions — be conducted for Deputy Commissioners, Additional Deputy Commissioners, Extra Assistant Commissioners, Sub-Divisional Officers, Police officers manning check gates and the staff of pass counters; and that a dedicated Inner Line cell be established in every district headquarters from existing manpower, as the Sentiyanger Committee recommended in 2015, functioning under the Commission. The exemptions require particular attention: the position of the families and dependants of Government servants, and the position of Nepali and Gorkha persons, are both administered inconsistently across districts at present. [Instrument: executive decision.]

1. The community
2. Give community verification a lawful footing rather than leaving it in the cold.

At present the verification of passes is undertaken in large measure by student bodies and community organisations, without authority of law, and those bodies are then blamed for acting without authority of law. That is an unsatisfactory arrangement for everybody, and it produces exactly the friction between the public and the administration that the Home Commissioner rightly cautioned against at our seminar. Mizoram’s experience, laid before us by Prof. Lallianchhunga, is that the State and the community act in tandem: the joint operation of the 12^th March 2024 between the Central Young Mizo Association and the Mizoram Police identified one thousand one hundred and eighty-seven persons without valid permits. We pray that verification drives be conducted jointly, upon the requisition of the district administration, with such community and student representatives as the Commission may authorise in writing, so that the authority is the State’s and the vigilance is shared. We do not seek a policing role, and we would gladly surrender the one we have been left to carry.

PART V — WHAT WE DO NOT ASK FOR

Because this representation will be read by others besides the Government, we state plainly what is not in it.

—  We do not ask that Nagaland be closed. The Federation has said consistently, and says again, that any citizen of India is welcome in Nagaland.

—  We do not ask that any person be refused a pass on the ground of origin, language, religion or community. We have said, and we repeat, that a valid Aadhaar card or elector’s photo identity card should suffice as the documentary qualification for a pass, the scrutiny being directed to the purpose of entry and to the credibility of the guarantor.

—  We do not ask that the pass be made costly, slow or difficult. A regime that is hard to comply with produces evasion, not compliance. Mizoram’s online portal has reduced entry times while its enforcement has grown stricter; the two are not in conflict.

—  We do not ask that students, patients, transit passengers, or those coming to trade honestly be inconvenienced.

—  We do not ask for a share in the administration of the Regulation in place of the State. We ask for the opposite — that the State discharge the function, so that our units need not.

What we ask for is a record: that the State know who is within the Inner Line, upon what pass, for what purpose, until when, and that it know when they have gone. Every prayer in Part IV is directed to that single end.

PART VI — THE RESPONSE SOUGHT

We pray for a written reply within thirty days of the receipt of this representation, stating against each of the twenty-two prayers whether it is accepted, accepted in part, under consideration or declined, and where accepted, the instrument by which and the date upon which it will be given effect. We further pray for a joint review meeting with the Home Department and the Commissioner at which the reply may be discussed, and we are ready to attend at any date the Government appoints.

We say, with respect, why we ask for it in these terms. Our Ten-Point Memorandum of the 10^th April 2025 drew a reply upon those of its points that fell to the Directorate of Information Technology and Communication, and upon the five that fell to the Government of Nagaland it has drawn nothing, notwithstanding our reminder of the 17^th July 2025. We do not wish to add this representation to that file. We therefore ask for a reply that addresses each prayer in turn, and we propose to publish this representation and to publish the Government’s reply alongside it, whatever it may contain.

CONCLUSION

Sir, the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation has been in force since the 1^st November 1873 — one hundred and fifty-two years. It has outlived the Government that made it, the Province for which it was made and the Empire that maintained it. It survives because successive generations have found it necessary. But survival is not the same as effect. A regulation that is administered as a counter for the issue of passes, that records no exit, that closes its own gates, that returns its enforcement columns blank for forty-eight months together and that has effected one removal upon the whole of the record before us, is a regulation in name.

The Hon’ble High Court has settled the law. The Government’s own committees have settled the diagnosis, four times over. The Cabinet has settled the remedy in principle. What is wanting is the doing of it, and the doing of it requires, for the greater part of what we have asked, no more than instructions from this Government to its own officers.

We have not written this representation in order to have it acknowledged. We have written it in order that it should be acted upon, and we shall return to the question until it is. The Federation places on record its gratitude for your participation in our seminar and for the support extended by the Government to it, and we remain, as we have been since 1979, at the Government’s disposal in this work.

Kuknalim.

 

Yours faithfully,

(SENCHUMO NSN LOTHA)

Chairman, Inner Line Regulation Commission

Naga Students’ Federation

 

(SEVE R. VADEO)

Member Secretary, Inner Line Regulation Commission

Naga Students’ Federation

Countersigned:

(MTEISUDING)

President

Naga Students’ Federation