GUWAHATI, Dec 8: The Opposition parties in Assam expressed serious concern over the recently held Home Secretary-level talks between India and Bangladesh in New Delhi that did not deliberate on issues like the disputed Indo-Bangladesh border in the Assam sector and the reluctance of the Bangladesh Border Guards (BBG) to accept judicially identified Bangladeshis from the Border Security Force ( BSF). The parties have asked the State Government to put pressure on the Centre to include these two burning issues of Assam at the Prime Minister-level talks between India and Bangladesh slated for next month.
Raising the issues in the State Assembly today, AGP president Chandra Mohan Patowary said: “For the last three years, the minister concerned has been giving the same replies on disputed lands with Bangladesh and lands under adverse possession of the neighbouring country, without finding out any tangible solution.”
“When a delegation of the State Assembly met Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on these issues, he told us: who is Bangladesh? We are free to put up fence on our land,” Patowary quoted Chidambaram as telling the delegation, and added: “Here in Assam, the State Government continues to maintain that it can’t erect any border fence on the disputed land.’’
Assam Accord Implementation Minister Bhumidhar Barman then responded: “We can’t erect any border fence along the disputed Bangladesh border, nor can we recover our lands under adverse possession of Bangladesh without getting any clear-cut approval to do so from the Central Government.”
Replying to a question on detention camps from AGP MLA Alaka Sarma, Barman said: “We have been searching for land for detention camps in Dhubri and Karimganj districts. However, as a short-term measure, we have made a makeshift arrangement to use a part of the Goalpara District Jail as detention camp to lodge detected Bangladeshis from December 1 this year. The 58 detected Bangladeshis now staying in the various jails of the State will be shifted to the detention camp.”
Barman further said that in order to prevent detected Bangladeshis from doing the vanishing act, the State Government had instructed the district superintendents of police to arrest foreigners, without issuing any quit-India notice to them, as soon as they were declared foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunals. The procedure followed till recently was that the superintendents of police concerned had to issue quit-India notices to the foreigners as soon as they were declared so by the Foreigners Tribunals.
Barman said the unwillingness of the BBG to accept the detected Bangladeshis from the BSF is an issue to be settled by the Centre through talks with the neighbouring country.
On the National Register of Citizens (NRC) update, Barman said that the Centre had amended the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 on November 9 this year and asked the State Government to go ahead with the NRC update work. “We are hopeful of completing the process by March 31, 2010,” he added.
CPI legislator Dhrupad Borgohain then asked the minister how it would be possible for the State Government to complete NRC update in just four months. “We have already completed some of the related processes. Our efforts are on to complete NRC update work by March 31, 2010,” Barman said.
AIUDF member Aditya Langthasa then pointed to the loopholes in the Foreigners Act. “The problem of foreigners will continue to persist if the loopholes in the Act are not plugged,” he said.
Barman further said that even if the Indo-Bangladesh border was fenced, it would remain porous in some sectors due to the changing river course.
Replying to another question, Barman said: “105 of the 10,597 people who were detected as foreigners from 2001 to 2009 have been deported so far”. THE SENTINEL
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