Nava Thakuria

What is the use of voluminous debates about the voting pattern of Bangladesh-origin Muslims in favour of a particular political party, which was observed in the last national elections across Assam,  and an increase in their aggressions over the original inhabitants despite enjoying development benefits (including housing, sanitation, electricity, etc facilities) from the Bharatiya Janata Party-led governments in New Delhi and Dispur? How long will the people of Assam participate in such discourses as it would result in almost nothing on the ground? Is it not the time to go for a pragmatic action and so demand by one and all for a correct National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Assam with the base year of 1951? The pertinent issue came to the public domain as the Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA, a forum of nationalist citizens based in northeast Bharat) insisted on ending such public discussions as early as possible and argued that the people should not continue killing time with the same old topic of East Pakistani-Bangladeshi migrants. Expressing distress over the development, the forum urged both the Central and State governments to take practical initiatives to identify the illegal migrants in Assam and deport them to their original places. Even if that is not possible (for any reason at this moment), the illegal migrants still need to be identified (with the basis of national cut-off year) and then proportionately distributed across the country, asserted the forum

Assam Accord, signed after six years long historic agitation in 1985, admitted to accept all Bangladesh-origin nationals, who entered the State on or before 21 March 1971. The argument was that prior to that year the land was known as East Pakistan and anybody who came from the Islamic republic couldnot be sent to a new nation (Bangladesh) as  Dhaka would never accept them. So it was primarily a problem of the Union government, but the entire burden was imposed on Assam to accept hundreds of thousands of  East Pakistani nationals. Question arises here, what prevented the agitating leaders to request the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (who was present on the occasion) to endorse the accord by signing along with the bureaucrats and agitators. Once it was done, it would have been mandatory to debate on the accord in Lok Sabha and probably a fair deal would have been achieved for the native populace of Assam.  Moreover, a demand could have been raised to shift a large portion of those East Pakistani turned Indian citizens to other parts of Bharat (following a proportional theory). Assam could have happily accepted its share (maybe one hundred thousand Bangladeshis) and proceed on the path of all round development and steady progress.

Talking about Assam NRC, the PPFA reminded that it’s yet to be endorsed by the Registrar General of India  and hence there is ample scope  for a complete  re-verification of the NRC draft under legal processes. The draft is also apprehended to include a large number of foreigners’ names with the help of tempered software (allegedly engineered by former NRC State coordinator Prateek Hajela and his associates). Moreover, the updating process was full of irregularities and corruption, as detected by none other than the Comptroller & Auditor General of India. The national audit body identified large scale financial irregularities to the tune of over  Rs 260 crores during the process and it also fixed responsibility on Hajela and Wipro limited. So why not Hajela should be booked under the law as he tried to derail the process for vested interest? Is there any confusion that the Enforcement Directorate  should inquire into  financial irregularities of the NRC updating process and probable practices of money laundering for taking legal actions. Moreover, if the foreign money is allegedly involved in the process to incorporate illegal migrants’ names in the NRC, why not a National Investigation Agency  probe be declared to unearth the truth? Finally some mainstream journalists were observed trying to convince the people to accept the NRC draft as the fine one (without verification) and why not they are probed for their activities (probably tempted by greed)?