’Assam Accord’ is misnomer, it’s MoS: ASM, NDFB(P)

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, January 2: Leaders of the Assam Sanmilita Mahasabha (ASM) and the NDFB(P) today said that the document signed between the Centre and leaders of the Assam Agitation was not ‘Assam Accord’ but a memorandum of settlement (MoS).

Talking to newsmen in the city today, ASM working president Matiur Rahman and NDFB(P) general secretary Gobindra Basumatary said: “The document signed between the then AASU leaders and the Centre was just a memorandum of settle (MoS), but the leaders of the agitation propagated it as Assam Accord. They had misled the people of the state.”

They further said: “The MoS was also signed in the interest of a section of people from Pakistan. This has come to the fore during the recent hearing of a case in this connection in the Supreme Court of India. In their affidavits submitted to the apex court, Centre’s Additiol Solicitor General Niraj Kishan Kaul and  Government of Assam advocate Joideep Gupta told the court that the people who had entered Assam should be given citizenship status in India. The MoS had been signed in order to keep people who entered India from East Pakistan in India.”

Rahman and Basumatary asked Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and Biraj Kumar Sarma as to why they had signed the document in the interest of people of Pakistan.