Manipur CM N Biren Singh on Tuesday launched a Facial Recognition System (FRS) at Manipur Airport and camera-mounted Mobile Monitoring Vehicles from the state secretariat in an effort ‘to strengthen the security network and the ILP system’ in the state. The CM of the northeastern state, through his social media handle, wrote “With the assistance of technologies such as FRS and Camera mounted Mobile Monitoring Vehicles, our security network and the ILP system will be further strengthened to detect illegal immigrants”.
The newly launched system in the state is designed to assist in the effective checking of the Inner Line Permit (ILP) holders whose ILPs have expired. However, the system is said to be implemented on a trial basis at the moment but has managed to identify ILP defaulters in the state. “The FRS system has been installed at various places including the Imphal Airport, Jiribam, and efforts are on to install it at other places including Khongsang Railway Station at Khongsang and Moreh,” said the CM.
Additionally, two mobile vehicles are stationed in Imphal East and West districts to identify ILP defaulters.
Inner Line Permit (ILP) is an official document issued by the state government concerned to allow inward travel of an Indian citizen into a protected area for a limited period of time.
The ILP regime came into effect in Manipur on January 1, 2020, and became the fourth state after Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram where the ILP regime is applicable.
Reports suggest that since the implementation of ILP in Manipur around 3,52,311 ILP’s including 1,17,715 temporary, 33,015 regular and 1,581 labour ILPs have been issued till December 2022.
Sikkim, another tiny Himalayan state in the Northeast, has also been witnessing a growing demand from general citizens along with political and non-political outfits for implementing ILP in the state concerning the increase of influx in the state. The Government of Sikkim in month of February this year had constituted a nine-member committee to oversee the applicability of ILP in the state with the retired secretary in the GoS, Santa Pradhan as the chairman.
The committee was entrusted with consulting and taking the opinion of all stakeholders and submitting its report to the state government.
However, no official statements have been issued so far from both the ILP committee and the state government regarding the ILP applicability in Sikkim.
