Home Minister Shivraj Patil on Monday hinted that the Centre suspected role of some terrorist organisation in triggering clashes between the All-Adivasi Students Association and local residents in Guwahati on November 24. Replying to a Calling Attention Motion in the Lok Sabha on Monday, Patil said that the information available with the Home Ministry indicated that some terrorist organisations were trying to ferment trouble in certain areas by fanning local issues. In this case, Assam is an area where there are some issues, he said. “We will not be surprised if some terrorist organisations are trying to create problems for people and for the Government there,” Patil said. The Adivasi student body had taken out a rally to press for inclusion of Santal Adivasis and tea tribes in the list of Scheduled Tribes (ST) which turned violent on November 24. Many MPs, including Ajay Chakraborty of the CPI and Kiren Rijiju of the BJP, raised the issue during the Calling Attention Motion. The Home Minister said that consecutive governments in Assam had been giving different views on this issue. The AGP governments in 1988 and 1999 had asked the Centre not to include the Adivasis and tea tribe in ST list as the tribals living in those areas would suffer. The tea tribes also did not meet the Lokur Committee criteria for ST status. The incumbent Government has now suggested that interest of the existing STs should not be affected but at the same time has suggested inclusion of 97 other communities as STs, said the Home Minister. Patil argued that the question about ST status had to be answered by the Tribal Affairs Minister, and not by him. Referring to the Opposition MPs’ demand for CBI inquiry into the incident, he said that the CBI was “overburdened” and therefore, it took a long time for the report to come. At this the Opposition NDA staged a walkout even as the Home Minister maintained that he had not ruled out CBI inquiry.Speaking on this issue earlier, many Opposition MPs blamed the Congress Government in the state for violence. Rijiju demanded Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s resignation on moral grounds even as Speaker Somnath Chatterjee reminded the members that they cannot levy allegations against someone who was not in the House to respond.
