Mahanta addresses the media in Guwahati on Tuesday. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, Oct. 10: The letter bomb strapped firmly to his waist, AGP (P) chief Prafulla Kumar Mahanta today said former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru has left behind a legacy of historical blunders.

Nehru’s conceding Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) to Pakistan which had 98.5 per cent non-Muslim population was not understood till date, especially since Pakistan was created purely on religious grounds.

“It is a historical fact that the Chakmas in the CHT had been pleading for their inclusion in India and had even raised the Indian flag till it was lowered by the Pakistan army on August 21, 1947, at gunpoint amid protest,” he said. Had Nehru not conceded the area to Pakistan, the region would have got a port, which would have changed the face of economy of the Northeast. The Chakma problem in Arunachal Pradesh would not have arisen, Mahanta said at a news conference.

The former chief minister was reacting to a recent disclosure of a letter written by Nehru to the then Assam chief minister Gopinath Bordoloi, asking him to accommodate the refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan or else think twice about claiming financial help from the Centre.

Mahanta also criticised Nehru’s China policy, which led to the Chinese aggression in 1962, pointing out that many defence experts have questioned the government’s failure to use the air force against the Chinese.

On the recent peace talks with Ulfa, Mahanta blamed both the Centre and the state government for the stalemate in the peace process. The failure of talks shows that both the Union and state governments have failed to take advantage of a situation, which was becoming conducive to holding peace talks with the militants.”

He suggested that to break the deadlock, both Ulfa and the government should sit across the table at the earliest and hold direct talks. “Dispense with the middlemen. It will only help bring peace back to the state,” he added. Mahanta also appealed to both sides to stop the blame-game.

“Blaming each other will not take the state or the cause anywhere,” he said. Mahanta also castigated the Tarun Gogoi government for allegedly failing to protect the interest of the farmers, who had lost crops to the unprecedented drought despite having a Congress-led government at the Centre.

“Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi rushed to Maharashtra during the floods, but for Assam, none had the time. The state government could not even get the Union agriculture minister to visit the state ,” Mahanta said.