Former IAS officer Harsh Mander on Tuesday has responded to Himanta Biswa Sarma’s remarks after the Assam chief minister accused the human rights activists’ of supporting illegal immigrants and allegedly playing a role in "ruining" the NRC process.
“Assam CM said in assembly he would put me in jail for my work for justice for people of contested citizenship. I'm proud of our efforts for release of those locked indefinitely in inhuman conditions in detention centres. If this is a crime Mr CM, by all means take action against me,” Mander wrote on X.
On June 10, addressing the media at the BJP’s state office in Guwahati, the Assam CM had said, “35 Bangladeshis are ready to be pushed back, just waiting for floods to recede. The issue here is very complex, we can’t solve it just with these pushbacks. We have to stop the influx of new immigrants. We have to create fear psychosis in their minds that illegal infiltration will be dealt with firmly, as done by Arunachal Pradesh.”
He further alleged, “They know the loopholes of the judicial system. Then there is this person called Harsh Mander. He fights all these cases of illegal infiltrators. He played a big role in ruining the NRC. This person was a member of the Sonia Gandhi led NAC.”
Mander was a member of Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, along with Mihir Shah, Narendra Jadhav, Ashis Mondal and various others from June 2010 to mid-2012.
The chief minister also targeted the Congress, saying, “You will see some young guns in Congress, who have been taken to America and other places for training. I won’t name them publicly or else they will get Congress party tickets. Like they say someone became a Congress party president because we played out his name.”
“The Congress party president is pro-Pakistan because the party and Rahul Gandhi himself support Pakistan. They are overplaying the party president post as if they become the country’s President. The president is therefore pro-Pakistan by default,” he added.
The chief minister stressed the need for legal representation in citizenship-related cases.
“Courts are for the people... if there are lawyers representing the interest of the people, the judiciary will have a better understanding of the people's problems,” he said, emphasising that government advocates alone were not sufficient to address the foreigners’ issue in the Supreme Court.
Mander has been a critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi since the Gujarat riots in 2002, when the prime minister was chief minister of the state. After Modi became prime minister in 2014, Mander has been at the forefront of fighting hate crimes and majoritarianism.
Mander launched Karwan e Mohabbat, a campaign for love, justice and solidarity, where he and his team travelled to meet victims of hate crimes, document and share their stories. They offered legal aid to those fighting cases, according to Article 14.
