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| AASU and AJYCP members take part in the meeting in Dhubri on Sunday. Telegraph picture |
Dhubri, Sept. 30: Various organisations and several leading citizens of Dhubri district today called for an extradition treaty with Bangladesh in order to deport illegal immigrants from Assam.
The demand was raised at a meeting convened jointly by the Dhubri district units of AASU and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) here at Asom Sahitya Sabha Bhawan today.
Speaking at the meeting, former principal of Dhubri Bholanath College, Girindra Nath Goswami, wanted to know how arrested illegal immigrants be deported in the absence of such a treaty.
“Assam Accord was signed hurriedly between AASU and the Centre with the state government as a party to it. The state government has failed to address the basic problems of state and that is why the state is still burning,” Goswami said.
When the BTAD was formed, in many the constituent villages only 30 per cent of the population were Bodos. This aggrieved the non-Bodo people living in the area and the recent turmoil is its result, Goswami said.
Goswami said the presence of Bangladeshi nationals in Assam could not be denied. In the 90s, when P.V. Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister, the then Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia, admitted the presence of illegal Bangladeshi nationals in India. She even had to face the wrath of the Bangladesh parliament because of this.
However, no initiative was taken by successive foreign ministers to take up the issue with their Bangladeshi counterparts, Goswami added.
Senior advocate Abdul Karim supported the joint move by AASU and AJYCP demanded the government to issue revenue certificates to the displaced in BTAD, expedite trials in the Foreigners Tribunal.
The president of Dhubri Rotary Club and Dhubri Town Club, Debamoy Sanyal, resented the fact that the Centre had not enacted the Assam Accord as an act.
Sanyal said the displaced should be first rehabilitated in Kokrajhar because the population density of Dhubri district was high. After this, the process of detection of illegal immigrants should be taken up.
The president of Dhubri District Pensioners’ Association, Sukumar Baruah, cautioned the organisations to be vigilant and alert against forces trying to give the issue a communal colour. “The clashes in BTAD are not between Bodos and Muslims as is being made out. Those are clashes between Bodos and illegal foreigners who happen to be from Bangladesh,” Baruah said.
A host of representatives from various organisations addressed the meeting and extended their wholehearted support in standing up to illegal immigration.
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