Meghalaya Deputy Chief Minister in-charge Home (Police) Prestone Tynsong on Tuesday asserted that the Meghalaya Residence Safety and Security Act (MRSSA), 2016 continues to be implemented by the state government, even as he clarified that the principal Act does not contain provisions for setting up entry and exit points, a limitation that has constrained its full operational scope.
Addressing media persons, Tynsong said the MRSSA is very much in force, particularly in the state capital, and rejected suggestions that the law had been abandoned. He explained that while the government has taken several administrative steps to strengthen the mechanism under the Act, certain legal shortcomings in its original framework prevent the authorities from establishing formal entry and exit checkpoints.
Talking to reporters, Tynsong said, “Who told you that we abandoned MRSSA? MRSSA is partly being implemented we are functioning under MRSSA where we already have even the district task force headed by each deputy commissioner, so we have already activated it and as per the rules it is there and we are making it more effective in all other districts, specially in Shillong let me tell you one thing we do have and it is fully functional, specially in Shillong.”
The Deputy Chief Minister cautioned against misinterpreting his earlier remarks on the law and reiterated that the absence of provisions related to entry and exit points stems from the original structure of the Act itself. He stressed that this gap is not a recent development but a long-standing issue that has hindered comprehensive enforcement.
“Don’t misunderstand, when I say some provision was not there for setting up of entry and exit, that is the old thing where we could not fully implement the MRSSA act because of the basic provisions were not there. That in the main principal act it was not there, that why we went to pass it in the Assembly in the form of an ammendment, ultimately the ammendment bill was referred by the then governor to the MHA,” Tynsong said.
Underlining the government’s position, he made it clear that the administration has continued to enforce the Act within the bounds of the law but cannot overstep its legal mandate. “I didn’t say that we didn’t implement, we do implement but legally speaking we cannot setup the entry and exit point because there is no provision in the original form of the MRSSA,” he added.
