GUWAHATI, Jan 23 � Alleging that the State Government�s Home Department is in a shambles and totally devoid of law and order, public activist Prof Deven Dutta today said Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi who is also in charge of the Home portfolio, had been a total failure in discharging all its fundamental obligations.
In an open letter sent to the Chief Minister through the media, Prof Dutta said that the first and foremost responsibility of the State machinery was to protect its territorial integrity as also the lives and properties of the citizens but the �Home Department had been a hundred per cent failure� in ensuring that.
Prof Dutta said that miscreants from Bangladesh were increasingly targetting the State�s populace along the border areas as was evident from the spurt in robbery cases in those areas. �Vast expanses of the State�s land including sattra (Vaishnavite monastery) land and property, and reserve forests, were under illegal occupation of both Bangladeshi and other encroachers. It is an open secret what Naga and Arunachali miscreants are doing on Assam�s land with our authorities content to look the other way,� he said.
Pointing out that law and order did not merely denote militancy-triggered violence, Prof Dutta said that the prevailing situation in the State laid bare the inefficiency of the Government in checking the unprecedentedly high incidence of all sorts of crimes.
�The State is reeling under a spate in crimes with dead bodies surfacing everywhere, and with dacoits and anti-social elements having a free run and perpetrating their despicable acts. The law-and-order machinery has collapsed totally,� Prof Dutta said.
Stating that unlawful activities and practices were flourishing under the patronage of the authorities themselves, Prof Dutta said that open sale of gutkha (which has been banned by the Supreme Court), alarmingly rising roadside deaths due to road accidents � often stemming from non-enforcement of relevant rules and norms by the transport and police authorities, growing criminal activities by land mafia, coal mafia, flouting of civic norms and building laws thereby rendering the city a veritable hell, and violation of rules and regulations by so-called VIPs, as a matter of routine, were possible in a state of complete lawlessness.
Prof Dutta said that the overwhelming preoccupation of the police in so-called VIP security � often at the expense of public order and peace � had made the forces lose their sense of commitment and responsibility to the public.
