The Clause-6 report

The High-Level Committee constituted by the Government of India for suggesting measures for implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord completed its task. It is now for the Centre to receive it and do the needful. But, unfortunately, the Union Home Ministry, the nodal department in the Central government for implementation of the Assam Accord, has reportedly not given it an audience to the High-Level Committee so that it could formally hand over the report. Yet another issue that many have expressed concern is that the Joint Secretary (NE) in the Union Home Ministry, who is also Member-Secretary of the Committee, has reportedly neither attended any of its meetings and sittings nor put his signature on the final report. The Committee headed by former Gauhati High Court Judge Biplab Kumar Sharma must however be complimented for having carried out the task within the stipulated period fixed by the Union government. Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, which pertains to “Safeguards and Economic Development”, reads as follows – Constitutional, Legislative and Administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.” While successive governments at the Centre and in Assam did not bother to even look at this vital Clause, it was the Narendra Modi government which, for the first time moved to determine what kind of Constitutional, Legislative and Administrative safeguards could be provided to the Assamese people in the face of an unprecedented demographic threat from “hordes” of illegal migrants from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. Now that the Committee has completed its task, it is now for the Union government to look at the recommendations and act on those. Meanwhile, there have been speculations about the kind of recommendations the Committee has made. Different people while trying to claim knowledge and possess ‘inside information’ about the Committee’s report have even gone to the extent of saying that it has suggested considering 1951 as the cut-off year for determining an Assamese for the purpose of implementing the Clause 6. There can be no two opinions that the Assamese – i.e., the indigenous and ethnic communities of Assam – have to be wholly protected. There cannot be any partial or temporary protection or safeguard especially when a state is under threat of a demographic invasion. The Supreme Court of India had even gone to the extent of saying that infiltration from Bangladesh was a kind of external aggression of the state. There is no denying the fact that a systematic plan has been on to ‘capture’ Assam after the founders of Pakistan had failed in 1947 to get Assam included in East Pakistan. Simultaneously, there is also a dangerous design of reducing the Assamese-speaking population to a minority. Tribal belts and blocks across the state have been already wiped out by illegal migrants and their progeny. That exactly is why the Assamese people – the indigenous people – need Constitutional, Legislative and Administrative safeguards.