Shillong, Sept 24: The Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council has decided to oppose the move to increase the number of seats, citing that this would only bring unnecessary financial burden to the Council.

The unanimous decision was taken at a meeting convened by KHADC chief executive member, Teiñwell Dkhar with all members of the Council on Tuesday.

As per the proposed amendment of the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution of India, the number of seats in the KHADC and GHADC will go up from the existing 30 to 40, out of which four will be nominated. Also two out of these four seats will be reserved for women.

Similarly, the seats in the JHADC will be increased from 30 to 34 with two out of the four nominated seats reserved for women.

After the meeting, Dkhar told reporters that the meeting has resolved not to accept the proposal to increase the number of seats in the KHADC.

“We want the seats for elected representatives to remain at 29 while the nominated seat should be increased from one to two,” he said.

The chief executive member said that the decision taken by the Council is final and would be placed before the upcoming meeting of the committee headed by the district council affairs minister, James K Sangma on September 26.

KHADC chairman, Pynshngaiñlang N Syiem said increasing the number of seats will only bring unnecessary burden to the KHADC, which is facing financial crisis.

“The Centre can only make proposal but the responsibility to pay salary lies with the autonomous district council,” he said.

Syiem said due to financial problems, the GHADC and JHADC could not pay salary to their employees for many months.

On the proposal to provide nomination to unrepresented tribes in the KHADC and GHADC, the former KHADC chief said the meeting has asserted the need to do away with this provision in the proposed amendment in respect of the KHADC.

“There has been no mentioned about the unrepresented tribes in the JHADC, and we feel that the same should also be applied in the case of the KHADC,” he said.

There has been a growing demand to delete the other tribes from the Schedule Tribe list of Meghalaya by amending the Constitution (Schedule Tribe) Order, 1950 in view of the proposed amendment to give nomination to unrepresented tribes in the autonomous district councils.