“The issue is very sensitive and it is not the state Government alone but the Union of India that has been dragged to the High Court by the PIL. I am fully convinced the ILP would not be abolished,” Chief Minister Zoramthanga said.

“The ILP may have been a colonial legacy, but it is necessary to continue with it in view of large-scale illegal infiltration of people, especially from Bangladesh into Mizoram and other tribal states,” J H Zoremthanga, president of the CYMA, said over telephone from Aizawl.

The CYMA president said at a time when more organisations of the Northeast were demanding extension of permit regulations to their respective states, it was ridiculous to claim that the ILP should not be continued.