Guwahati, July 9: Six passenger trains have been cancelled by the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) in view of the 12-hour rail blockade called by the All Koch Rajbongshi Students' Union (AKRSU) at Basugaon railway station in Kokrajhar district tomorrow.
AKRSU has called the blockade to demand Scheduled Tribe status for the Koch Rajbongshi community and to push for the creation of a separate Kamtapur state.
The union leaders claimed that the population of the Koch Rajbongshi community currently stands at 69 lakh.
Besides the six cancelled passenger trains, the NFR will also control the movement of the 12345 Saraighat Express, which runs between Howrah and Guwahati, and the 15645 Guwahati Express, which runs between Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Mumbai and Guwahati over Alipurduar division.
The cancelled trains are: 55753/55754 passenger train between Alipurduar and Guwahati, 15769/15770 Intercity Express between Alipurduar and Lumbding via Guwahati, 15771/15772 Intercity Express between Alipurduar and Kamakhya, 55811/55812 passenger between Dhubri and Kamakhya, 07526/07525 special passenger between New Bongaigaon and New Jalpaiguri and 55713/55714 passenger train between New Jalpaiguri and Rangiya.
Approximately 30,000 daily commuters will be affected by the rail blockade.
"During this season, many students, who are going outside the state for higher education, travel by train. The rail blockade will mainly affect the students," the public relations officer of NFR, Nripen Bhattacharya, told The Telegraph.
"During the last Assembly and Lok Sabha election campaigns, the BJP had promised to give ST status to six communities of Assam. But till now the government has not done anything to fulfil the promise. Several rounds of discussions have been held between the government and us, but in vain. So we decided to call the 12-hours rail blockade at Basugaon railway station," AKRSU general secretary Gokul Barman told The Telegraph.
The Hiteswar Barman group of the AKRSU has called another rail blockade in Bongaigaon on July 11.
The six communities seeking ST status are the Morans, Muttocks, Koch Rajbongshis, Tai Ahoms, Sutias and tea tribes.
The Centre had formed a committee to find the modalities on how to grant ST status to these communities. This panel was supposed to submit its report by June 30 but it failed to do, leading to dissatisfaction among various organisations.
In a separate development, NFR has also cancelled the 55675/55676 and 55679/55680 passenger trains that run between Agartala and Dharmanagar tomorrow.
The Silchar-Agartala passenger train will be terminated at Dharmanagar instead of Agartala while the Sealdah-Agartala-Kanchanjunga Express will be terminated at Badarpur instead of Agartala. The NFR said these changes were being made due to "unavoidable circumstances".
