GUWAHATI, March 19 � The government will have to take a political decision on the definition of Assamese people for granting reservation under the provisions of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord. This was the observation made by former Union Home Secretary GK Pillai.
Talking to The Assam Tribune, Pillai pointed out that the issue of determining the definition of Assamese people cannot be taken by any other organisation and the government must take the political decision in this regard.
Commenting on the slow progress of implementation of the Assam Accord, the former Union Home Secretary, who took personal interest on the issue during his tenure in the Home Ministry, admitted that the State and Central governments have failed to show necessary keenness on the issue over the years.
During Pillai�s tenure as the Joint Secretary (North East) of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), a tripartite subcommittee was formed to suggest measures to the government on implementation of Clauses 6 and 7 of the Assam Accord. �I left the MHA in 2001 and when I returned to the Ministry as the Home Secretary in 2010, I found that nothing had moved in those years,� he lamented.
Pillai expressed the view that the State government and the All Assam Students� Union (AASU) would have to keep mounting pressure on the Centre on implementation of various Clauses of the Accord. He pointed out that the Centre is too busy in affairs of the entire country and that is why the State government and the AASU should mount pressure on the Centre on implementation of the various Clauses of the Assam Accord.
The former Union Home Secretary said that the process of updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) of 1951 was also unnecessarily delayed as the State government suspended the process after one incident of violence by one particular organisation in 2010. He expressed fear that delay in this regard might complicate the situation.
Meanwhile, AASU adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya alleged that the tripartite subcommittee has not met for years, which proved the lack of sincerity on the part of Central and State governments. The subcommittee was active when Pillai was the Joint Secretary (North East) of the MHA and certain key decisions were taken by it. But the subcommittee later became almost defunct. Though it was revived following a tripartite meeting chaired by the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to review the implementation of the Accord in 2005, it met only once since then, Bhattacharya added.
