Implementing Clause VI

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s announcement regarding implementing the recommendations of the Justice Biplab Kumar Sharma Committee on Clause VI of the Assam Accord has come at a very crucial time. The Assam Accord was signed between the Centre, Government of Assam, All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), and the erstwhile All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) way back in August 1985. Nearly 34 years later, the Justice Sharma Committee was formed in 2019 by the first BJP-led government headed by Sarbananda Sonowal, and it submitted its report in 2020. According to Chief Minister Sarma, the state government can take decisions on 52 of the 67 recommendations, while five or six recommendations need to be jointly decided by Delhi and Dispur. Decisions on the rest of the recommendations lie with the central government. It is also significant to note that the present government has decided to take the AASU and other stakeholders into confidence in implementing the decisions. Chief Minister Sarma’s plan, as was outlined in a press conference on Saturday, is to take up those recommendations or issues that have no ‘hiccups’ first. He has also stated that the government will keep in mind not to go into any confrontations with the people of the Sixth Schedule areas and the Barak Valley districts while implementing them. What the government at this probably needs to do is take all the patriotic organizations into confidence, which consider infiltration and large-scale immigration as a threat to the demography of Assam, in addition to the threats posed by the aliens and their progeny to the integrity and sovereignty of India. In this connection, one must also keep in mind what the Supreme Court of India had said while striking down the notorious IM(DT) Act in 2005. The apex court, while putting on record that India was facing a silent demographic invasion in the Northeastern front, days are not far when the infiltrators and their progeny would try to demand merger of certain districts of Assam with Bangladesh. The Indian Army too is on record saying that the Siliguri corridor linking Northeast with mainland India too faces a threat from these infiltrators who work at the behest of certain anti-India forces, which have their dreams rooted in the Muslim League’s demand of the 1940s for inclusion of Assam in the then East Pakistan. While Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi had fought tooth and nail against that Muslim League conspiracy and had saved Assam in 1947, and while his three consecutive successors had also followed the same patriotic stand, subsequent Congress regimes in Assam had chosen to follow an appeasement policy by looking the other way whenever the issue of demographic invasion of Assam was raised. It is also important for the present generation of indigenous people in Assam to always remember that while one great Assamese Congress leader had coined a slogan that referred to the “Ali” (Muslim immigrant) as a guarantee for Congress wins in elections, another Assamese Congress leader had worked overtime to ensure that Parliament passed a law—the IM(DT) Act—in order to protect each and every illegal migrant in Assam.