BONGAIGAON, April 20 � The two-day celebration of the All Assam Bengali Youth-Student Federation�s 25th foundation day began today under the aegis of its Bongaigaon district unit at the organisation�s newly built district office at Natunpara in Bongaigaon.
Today, local public and leaders of the student body participated in the flag-hoisting, paying of homage to martyrs and unveiling of life-size statues of Sahityarathi Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Viswakavi Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on the district office premises.
�We demand of the government to grant refugee status to the Hindu Bengalis who had migrated to the country from the erstwhile East Pakistan to protect their faith,� said Sankar Chatterjee, adviser of the student federation.
Chatterjee stressed that the citizenship of any Hindu Bengali individual should be verified by the people of the area where the person lives, if the person concerned fails to show any valid documents.
When the federation was formed in 1990 at Kalaigaon (now in Udalguri under BTAD), it took up the issue of those people of the community who had suffered humiliation during the Assam Agitation. Subsequently, the federation included the issues of D-voters and rights of the Bengali people living in BTAD, said Subhas Sarkar, adviser of the federation.
