Cancel office memorandum or face the music, warns BSS

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Jan 8: The Bodo Sahitya Sabha (BSS) has said that Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has been turning a deaf ear on various demands of the BSS for long 15 years, without doing anything worthwhile.

Taking to newsmen in the city today, BSS president Kameswar Brahma, general secretary Kamala Kanta Mushahary and other office-bearers said: “We have long been demanding a separate Directorate of Public Instruction for the Bodos and other tribals of the State, a directorate of education in the BTC and implementation of Bodo as an official language in accordance with the BTC Accord in the BTAD and as an associate official language in other Bodo-domited districts etc. None of these demands has been fulfilled by Dispur in the past 15 years.”

They said: “Rather, Gogoi has conspired to push the Bodo language towards destruction by converting a number of Bodo medium teachers as Assamese medium teachers in order to ratiolize teaching staff in accordance with the Right to Education (RTE), 2009. The government stopped short of filling up the vacant posts of teachers in Bodo medium schools that have been lying vacant due to retirement and death of teachers. Due to paucity of adequate number of teachers, the Bodo medium schools have been inching towards destruction. The number of vacancies in Bodo medium schools are being filled up with teachers of Assamese medium.”

“Since 2001, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has been attending the annual conference of the BSS, hearing our demands and assuring us of meeting our demands, but doing precious little towards that end. This led us not to invite the Chief Minister in the BSS conference in 2014, and we aren’t going to invite him this year as well since he is a liar. We aren’t also going to invite any of Gogoi’s Cabinet colleagues,” they said, and added: “And of late in the recent office memorandum issued on December 29, 2015 by the Secretary of Secondary Education for the filling up some posts of junior assistants in High Schools, HS Schools and High Madrassas in the State, the it has been spelt out in no uncertain terms that the question papers will be in Assamese in the Brahmaputra Valley and in Bengali in the Barak Valley. There is no provision for Bodo. This is a glaring example of neglect. We’ve sent a memorandum to the Chief Minister, the Education Minister, the Chief Secretary and the Principal Secretary of Education. If the office memorandum is not cancelled, we will start a vigorous agitation in the State.”