15 yrs of Assam Accord — Main issue of influx forgotten, says AASU

“It is a matter of grave concern that neither the Assam government nor the Centre is willing to sincerely put an end to infiltration and solve the issue once and for all. What we have seen over the years is that both Asom Gana Parishad and the BJP are only willing to continue politicking with the issue,” says All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) president Prabin Boro.

One week ahead of the fifteenth anniversary of the accord, the AASU was taking stock of the accord’s implementation, and found that the issue of influx had actually aggravated, with more people coming in from Bangladesh, in addition to the number of those already living here going up manifold.

“The worst is the issue of scrapping the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act of 1983, which is the main hurdle in identifying and throwing out the Bangladeshi migrants who have swamped the state, and are on the verge of reducing the indigenous population into a minority,” Boro adds.

AASU adviser Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharyya is even more enraged. He charges Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta with having double standards. “Mahanta, one of the principal signatories to the accord, talks in different voices on the IMDT Act,” he says.

He points out that while a recommendation by the Assam government was in favour of the Act being scrapped, Mahanta had recently told a party convention here that the Act should be amended. “This is ridiculous,” the AASU adviser added.

In fact, the AASU delegation walked out of a meeting convened by the state government regarding a review of the accord, complaining that the government and its Chief Minister had contradictory stands on the Act.

The AASU is equally sore with the Centre for not scrapping the Act. “Even the President of India had, during his address to Parliament, favoured repealing the Act, but till date the Government at the Centre has not taken any concrete step,” Bhattacharyya says.

The AASU has also complained that work on construction of a barbed wire fence along the India-Bangladesh border is progressing at a snail’s pace. “While work on the fence has been slow, infiltration is still continuing unabated,” the AASU leader says.

In the 152-km Indo-Bangla border portion in Dhubri, Karp>

A road along the border to facilitate better patrolling is also incomplete with about 50 km yet to be constructed, official statistics say.

Interestingly most of the other clauses of the accord, like a refinery at Numaligarh, a cultural complex at Guwahati, extension of broad guage railways up to Dibrugarh, an IIT at Guwahati, have been all completed, though much behind schedule.

Several other projects have also come up in the state as offshoots of the Assam Accord. These include two Central universities, one each at Tezpur and Silchar, an Institute of Social Change, an Institute for Water and Land Management.

“All these are okay. But the basic issue has to be addressed with top priority. But the tragedy is that the BJP, which had promised a lot before the elections has started shying away, for reasons best known to its leaders,” remarks AASU president Prabin Boro.