All Koch Rajbongsi Students’ Union, Mahila Samiti & Chilarai Sena members stage a road blockade at Gossaigaon in Kokrajhar district demanding a separate state. File picture

Dhubri, July 17: All the eight legislators belonging to the Koch Rajbongshi community extended support to demands for a separate Kamtapur state and Schedule Tribe status for the community during a meeting at OBC Bhawan in Guwahati today.

The meeting was organised by Koch Rajbongshi Sanmilita Mancha (Koch Rajbongshi United Forum), a confederation of all the organisations of the community.

Four Congress legislators, Akon Bora, Anjan Dutta, Monika Bora and Durlabh Chamua, and three AGP legislators, Phani Bhusan Choudhury, Bhupen Roy and Mukanda Choudhury attended the meeting while the lone legislator from BJP, Monoranjan Kumar Dutta, could not turn up because of illness.

Dutta in a communication to forum members expressed support to the community’s cause, a forum source said.

Addressing the packed auditorium at OBC Bhawan, Akon Bora, Phani Bhusan Choudhury and Durlabha Chamua extended full support to Kamtapur statehood and ST status for the community and said there was no reason for the state and the central government to deprive the Koch Rajbongshis from their legitimate demands if Telangana and separate Bodoland issues were being considered.

The legislators called upon the Koch Rajbongshis to rise above petty politics and work for the betterment of the community, shunning political differences.

The chief convenor of the forum, Biswajit Roy, who is also the president of the All Koch Rajbongshi Students’ Union, told this correspondent that the meeting was convened to hammer out a future course of movement.

“The meeting is a part of long drawn movement declared in June this year. All the wings of the community, including the Separate State Demand Committee (SSDC), a joint committee of Assam and north Bengal, have already shown solidarity to take forward the movement to achieve the goal this time,” Roy added.

The Atul Roy faction of the All Koch Rajbongshi Students’ Union has called a 12-hour Assam bandh from 5am tomorrow in protest against not submitting to the Centre’s registrar reports prepared by the three-member committees for six ethnic groups of Assam on ST status for their communities.

Dispur had entrusted the committees to prepare reports on the ethnic features of each community. The committees submitted the reports to the Assam government. The reports were, however, not sent to the registrar of the Government of India by the state government.