Union home minister P Chidambaram interacts with riot-hit people at Bhodgaon relief camp in Kokrajhar district of Assam on Monday. (PTI)

Kokrajhar/Guwahati, July 30: Union home minister P. Chidambaram today visited Assam’s strife-torn Kokrajhar and Chirang districts, urged the people to maintain peace and assured them of all possible help. He is scheduled to visit Dhubri tomorrow.

The inspector-general of Bodoland Territorial Areas District, S.N. Singh, told the home minister during a presentation that pent up resentment against the BTC administration was being seen as one of the triggers of the weeklong violence that rocked Kokrajhar and Chirang districts under the BTAD.

The minister himself witnessed the boiling “resentment” earlier in the day when he was greeted with shouts of “Hagrama Mohilary (BTC chief) murdabad” and the demand for dissolution of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) at a relief camp in Basugaon in Chirang district.

Sources in Chidambaram’s entourage told The Telegraph that the resentment appeared to stem from a feeling of “perceived or genuine” deprivation among the minority community living in the BTAD areas and from the delay in providing relief to those affected by the violence.

“The relief camp inmates appeared agitated and the minister assured them of quick relief and rehabilitation,” one of them said.

Earlier, Chidambaram visited two relief camps at Titaguri High School and Bhotgaon in Kokrajhar district. Chidambaram sought to know about the “delay” in deployment of central security forces as was earlier alleged by chief minister Tarun Gogoi. “What do you mean by the delay?” he is said to have asked.

An official told him that the state government had sought additional central forces on July 20, but their actual deployment on the ground took several days.

Chidambaram told reporters in Kokrajhar that the government’s priority was to ensure restoration of peace and harmony and provision of relief and rehabilitation. “Our present concern is to look after the people, give them food, medicine, drinking water and gently persuade them to go back to their villages.”