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ABSU rejects panel on State demand

By R Dutta choudhury

GUWAHATI, Feb 22 � The All Bodo Students� Union (ABSU) has rejected the Central Government�s proposal to form an expert committee to study the viability of the demand for creation of a separate state of Bodoland. The student body will take its decision on its future course of action after the proposed meeting with Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on February 27.

Talking to The Assam Tribune, ABSU president Promode Boro said there was no justification in forming an expert committee to study the feasibility of the demand for creation of a separate state. He said that no expert committee was formed before creation of new states in the past, and during the process of creation of Telangana also, no such committee was formed and the Government of India took the decision on its own. He further said that way back in 1991, a committee headed by Bhupinder Singh was formed, but the report of the committee is still gathering dust.

The ABSU president said that the agitation for creation of Bodoland has been going on for the past 47 years and there is no justification in forming an expert committee to study the viability of the demand now and such an exercise would be a meaningless one. �Even after so many years of Independence, we still have to agitate for creation of LP schools and textbooks, which is very unfortunate,� he added.

Commenting on the tripartite meeting held yesterday, Boro said that the meeting could not arrive at any decision. He said the Home Ministry officials admitted that certain decisions can be taken only at the political level. �We have been demanding talks at the political level for a long time and the MHA has assured us that the Union Home Minister would meet us on February 27. We will decide our future course of action after that meeting,� he said.

Boro said if the talks with the Union Home Minister fail, the student body would be forced to launch a fresh movement. He claimed that the ABSU did not want to cause sufferings of common people with rail and road blockades, but they were forced to do so as the Government was not bothered when they resorted to agitations like hunger strike.

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