GUWAHATI, March 3 - Alleging that the BJP governments at the Centre and in the State were backtracking from their pledges and indulging in acts detrimental to the interests of the people of Assam, former Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Tarun Gogoi today said that the BJP�s move to amend the Citizenship Act would spell disaster for the State�s indigenous people.
�If the BJP is � and as Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal keeps claiming at the drop of a hat � so serious about securing the land and rights of the indigenous communities, he needs to explain how the amendment to the Citizenship Act for accommodating Bangladeshi Hindu migrants would serve the interests of Assam and its people,� he said.
Gogoi, who was addressing the media, said that the State Government was doing little more than toeing the lines of the BJP�s central leadership who never had Assam�s interests in their minds.
Gogoi also demanded that the BJP Government made public the details of the Naga peace accord involving the NSCN(IM). �The NSCN had been demanding integration of Naga-inhabited areas outside Nagaland. When I was Chief Minister, I unequivocally rejected such a stance of the Centre. Why is the BJP Government not making the details of the Naga accord public?� he said.
Gogoi further accused the BJP Government of doing little to settle the vexed Assam-Nagaland border row. �We sincerely tried to settle the boundary dispute on the basis of the constitutional status of inter-state boundaries but the present government is inert on the issue,� he said.
On the Gauhati High Court�s ruling that has made residential documents issued by gaon panchayats invalid for citizenship claims, Gogoi said that it was the Registrar General of India (RGI) who made such certificates as one of the valid documents, and that the RGI should now move the Supreme Court.
