GUWAHATI, Aug 17 � Former Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta accused the Government of India of maintaining double standards on the issue of implementation of the Assam Accord and warned Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh that any further delay in implementation of the main clauses of the Accord would strengthen the hands of the divisive forces.
In a memorandum to the Prime Minister, Mahanta said that the Union Home Ministry is the nodal Ministry for the implementation of the Accord and Dr Singh should intervene to ensure that the promises made by the Government of India 25 years ago are fulfilled.
Mahanta said that the Dr Singh�s recent statement of considering autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir to provide constitutional safeguards to the people of the state only showed double standards maintained by the Government of India as even after 25 years of signing of the Assam Accord, constitutional safeguards are not given to the people of Assam as per the provisions of Clause 6 of the Accord.
Mahanta, one of the signatories of the Accord, said that the main clauses of the Accord are yet to be fulfilled and the Government of India failed to come into an agreement with Bangladesh so that the neighbouring country accepts those sought to be deported. The tribunals set up under the provisions of the Foreigners� Act failed to deliver the results, while, for years, the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) was a major hurdle in the way of detection of foreigners before it was struck down by the Supreme Court.
The former Chief Minister called upon the Prime Minister to instruct the State Government to resume implementation of the pilot projects of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) of 1951 as all parties cutting across political and communal lines accepted March 25, 1971 as the cut off date for detection of foreigners. He said that the failure of the Government of India to seal the international border even after 25 years of the signing of the Accord is very unfortunate. He said that the border is yet to be sealed only because of lack of will of the Government of India as thousands of kilometers of international border in the western sector was sealed within years.
