The root cause of the problem in Assam is the illegal emigration from Bangladesh that is taking place. It has given rise to continuing violence in Assam. The present clashes taking part in the BTAD(Bodoland Territorial Autonomus District) of Assam is but an offshoot of the same.
One shudders to think about the Nellie massacre in which 1800 men, women and children who were immigrant Muslims from Bangladesh were killed in 1983 by Assamese tribals.
After some failed accords, the Assam Accord was concluded by Rajiv Gandhi in 1985. This accord fixed the cut-off date to determine illegal migrants in Assam as March 25, 1971, the day Bangladesh was born.
The Accord classified the migrants from Bangladesh as follows:
1. Those who had come and settled in the state on or before this date shall be regarded as citizens of India.
2. Those migrants who have arrived in the state after this date are to be detected and expelled in accordance with the law.
But after signing of the Assam Accord, the Assamese rebel groups launched a militant struggle against the government and asked them to expel all illegal immigrants irrespective of their time of migration to India.
The overall Muslim population of the area has grown from 18 per cent in the 1960s to over 40 per cent now which indicates the scale of migration that is taking place. If one compares the decadal growth if population of India vis a vis the state of Assam, it is clear that large scale immigration is taking place continuously thanks to the Congress party treating them as vote banks.
Since Independence, except for the periods 1985-90 and 1996-2001 when the Assam Gana Parishad ruled, it is the Congress government that is holding power in the state.
The biggest problem is that the Bangladeshi government denies that there is a single illegal Bangladeshi immigrant in India. With the stand of the Bangladeshi government being thus, they would not even accept a single person deported from India. So, there is nothing India could do on this account.
The only solution appears to be to immediately compile a directory of all the citizens of Assam and issue identification to them without touching the citizenship issue. If Indian citizenship is linked to the identification card, then all Assamese militant groups would be up in arms, therefore the card has to be an instrument for simply enumerating the present population of Assam.
This would put a check on the illegal migration that is taking place continuously. But of course, why would governments who thrive on vote bank politics do such a thing?
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