OVER 60OOO PARTICIPANTS IN STUDENTS' UNION RALLY

Dudhnoi, March 24: Leaders of the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) today pledged to fulfil the dreams of 855 martyrs, on the second day of its 16th annual conference here.

The AASU leaders fondly recalled the six-year Assam Movement and its martyrs.

Perhaps the realisation that the dreams of the martyrs have remained unfulfilled even 30 years after the agitation haunted them when they stood in front of around 5,000 young students this morning.

"They (the martyrs) have gone. Now the Bangladeshis are putting the Assamese people in a deep crisis. We must fulfil the dreams of the martyrs," said the union's general secretary, Tapan Gogoi, after paying tribute to the martyrs.

AASU president Sankar Prasad Rai and adviser Samujjal Bhattacharjya also talked about the martyrs and their dreams.

The young participants intently listened to them and staged a march past.

Whether the successive leaders of the students' union have succeeded or failed to achieve the objectives of the organisation, they continue to hold a special position among countless young members. This was evident when the youths touched the leaders' feet during the felicitation.

But nobody spoke of the families of the martyrs, most of whom are still hoping that the state government will give them a grade III or grade IV job as compensation.

It was only last month that All-Assam Martyrs' Families Co-ordination Committee demanded that Dispur complete the process of giving jobs to all the martyrs' families.

They said the Assam government gave jobs to members of 500 families between 2000 and 2002 with the promise that the remaining 355 families would be covered during the next phase, which is yet to come.

In spite of this, people of all ages, from schoolchildren to old women, participated in the over 2km cultural procession, expressing their love for and faith in the students' union.

The members of the union believe the number of participants in the procession was around 60,000.

"The AASU denotes strength, sense and unity. If we cannot stand as one, we will fail to march ahead," said Sankar Prasad Rai.

The president of the Asam Sahitya Sabha, Dhrubajyoti Bora, described the union as a "historically significant students' union" that has been working in various fields.

"I appeal to AASU to give special priority to improve the education scenario of the state, which is lagging behind many other states of the country," he said, after inaugurating an exhibition-cum-book fair.

Echoing the unity mantra of the union, Bora said, "Assamese is not the language of any particular community rather a common language for all living in the state, and everybody should come together to protect it."

At the same time, he said literary bodies and languages of different communities of the state should also be respected.

The president of North East Students' Organisation, Samuel Jyrwa, said they would not have performed efficiently without AASU's support and promised their co-operation in future.

Tomorrow, leaders of the student organisations of different indigenous communities, with whom AASU has been jointly working for quite some time now, will attend the open session of the conference.

The presidents and general secretaries of the apex literary bodies of several indigenous communities have also been invited.

Mridul Hazarika, the vice-chancellor of Gauhati University, and Kamal Malla Bujarbaruah, vice-chancellor of Assam Agricultural University, have been invited as special guests.