GUWAHATI, Dec 20 - Hitting out at Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal for his statements on his commitment to protect the interests of the indigenous communities and simultaneously allowing the illegal migrants entering the country up to 2014 to stay in Assam, the All Assam Students� Union (AASU) today said that Sonowal�s stand was both misleading and ridiculous.
The students� body, which has launched a Statewide agitation against the �unconstitutional� CAA, today alleged that Sonowal openly accepted the presence of illegal Bangladeshis in Assam and also agreed to rehabilitate them in the State.
�The AASU would continue its democratic and disciplined agitation against the CAA but at the same time warn the Chief Minister and other leaders of the ruling dispensation to not mislead the people of Assam on an issue that involves the question of their existence,� AASU chief advisor Samujjal Bhattacharyya said.
Countering the Chief Minister�s assertion that the number of Hindu Bangladeshis in Assam was negligible, the AASU leaders said that if the number was so tiny, then he should talk to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah and arrange for their rehabilitation in Gujarat.
�In 2004, the then Union Minister of State for Home himself had said in Parliament that there were 1.2 crore illegal Bangladeshis in the country and 50 lakh of them were in Assam. It�s a government data and the Chief Minister cannot ignore it,� the AASU leaders mentioned.
Also lambasting Sonowal for deviating from his stand on implementing the Assam Accord, the students� body said that agreeing to accept the illegal Bangladeshis who had entered Assam from 1971 to 2014 is the biggest violation of Assam Accord, to which Sonowal has given his assent, just to protect his vote bank.
�Now, there is a misleading campaign to assert that Clause Six of the Assam Accord is the soul of the tripartite agreement and other clauses can be compromised on to achieve that. We assert once again that all the clauses of the Assam Accord are for protecting the indigenous and Clause Five, which fixes the cutoff date for detection and deportation of the illegal migrants is, by no means, less than Clause Six that seeks Constitutional safeguards for the indigenous communities,� said the student body leaders reiterating its pledge to continue the anti-CAA movement till the Act is scrapped.
