Guwahati: Leader of Opposition in the Assam assembly Debabrata Saikia on Sunday slammed the AGP for allegedly misguiding the people of Assam and using the illegal migrants issue for political gain for over three decades.

"After the AGP formed the government in 1985, an 'intensive revision' of the electoral rolls of Assam was undertaken under the supervision of the Election Commission. The poll panel employed 25,000 enumerators who went from house to house and recorded every adult on two separate lists. List I was for those whose names could be traced directly or by parentage to the 1971 electoral rolls and list II was for the rest. About 4 lakh names were deleted at the preliminary stage itself out of about the 35 lakh names in list II," Saikia said.

Saikia said the AGP allegedly pretends to be oblivious to such facts and instead prefers to misguide people by highlighting the alleged threat posed by illegal migrants. He said, "The state election authorities carried out a second 'special revision' of the electoral rolls in 1990 under EC guidelines. The then chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, on record told a local newspaper on October 5, 1990, that the corrected electoral rolls were 'OK' and that he was 'satisfied'." Saikia said the concept of D-voters, which started during the AGP's tenure, has now become a source of misery for not only bona-fide citizens belonging to the linguistic and religious minority communities but also to groups such as the Koch-Rajbongshis.

AGP leader Manoj Saikia said, "The allegation is baseless. Our stand is clear and has been unchanged. The Congress has no clear stand over it. They have a different stand in Barak and Brahmaputra valleys. The Congress has been trying to get political benefit from such issues."