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Dhubri/Guwahati, Aug. 12: The AGP today demanded a “transparent and clear-cut” policy for rehabilitation of riot-hot people in the Bodo belt, while both the Congress and the AIUDF stayed busy readying their demands to be placed before UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi who is scheduled to visit Kokrajhar and Dhubri districts tomorrow with home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.
PCC and Dhubri district Congress leaders are burning midnight oil to give final shape to the demands to be submitted to Sonia in a memorandum tomorrow.
Dhubri district Congress president Arobinda Kumar Saha said they were preparing a memorandum urging her take steps to rehabilitate the displaced at earliest.
“We have also included in the memorandum a brief activity and service report of our grassroots workers who have been tirelessly rendering service to the relief camp inmates in the district.”
A section of Congress leaders in lower Assam districts is also leaving no stone unturned to blame the Bodoland People’s Front’s (BPF) alleged gameplan to drive out minorities, something which Dispur has “allowed”.
BPF administers the Bodo Territorial Council and is also the Congress’s coalition partner at Dispur.
AIUDF Dhubri district president Aminur Rahman Ahmed said the party was preparing a memorandum for Sonia, which, like the Congress, harps on early rehabilitation.
“We will highlight the plight of the displaced who have been staying in the camps for last 20 days and place the demand for early rehabilitation.”
Sources in Congress said Sonia Gandhi would arrive in Dhubri tomorrow by helicopter, land at the Panbari BSF camp at 2.30pm and visiting two relief camps at Borkanda High School and Machpara. Before that, she will land in Guwahati and then fly to Kokrajhar.
Describing the August 15 deadline set by the state government for sending back riot victims to their homes as “impractical”, AGP president Prafulla Kumar Mahanta today said in Guwahati that the camp inmates were unwilling to return home owing to inadequate security.
“The government should initiate confidence-building measures before sending them home.”
He rued that even so many days after the riots, the state government was yet to convene an all-party meeting, saying it had no moral right to continue, as it did not take steps to control the riots despite prior information.
Mahanta said the state government must devise a “transparent and clear-cut” rehabilitation policy, as apprehensions were widespread about illegal migrants from Bangladesh trying to take advantage of the rehabilitation scheme to settle in Assam.
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