GOGOI BLAMES SAFFRON PARTY OF PLAYING POLITICS ON ASSAM NRC ISSUE/ SAYS IT’S USING IT FOR PURE POLITICAL ADVANTAGE FOR THE 2019 ELECTIONS

The former chief minister of Assam Tarun Gogoi today accused the BJP led NDA government at the centre and the saffron party as opportunists, discrimatory, betrayers and anti constitutional and said that the leaders of the saffron party are discriminating against the people of Assam by way of excluding forty lakh people from the National Register of Citizens, majority of whom are Indian citizens and have been voting in the elections till 1916 and contributing in electing law makers in the state assembly as well as in Parliament from the state.

The former Chief minister of Congress government in Assam was today responding to the queries of the media persons and the moderator professor Rajiv Gowda, M P Rajya Sabha and chairman of the All India Committee’s Research Department at the Press Club of India in New Delhi.

The former union minister and the member of the newly formed AICC’s core committee for 2019 election, Jai Ram Ramesh was also present on this ocassion.

Highly critical of the BJP government’s policy on NRC terming it as hephahazard, veteran Congress leader and former CM said that when the Assam accord was signed in 1985 between the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and the All Assam Students Union it was in principle decided that those who came to Assam till 24th March 1971 will be accorded the Indian citizenship status and without any discrimination.

The then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had been kind enough to give an IIT, two central universities, massive economic package and other developmental projects to Assam. People of the state were extremely happy and grateful to him.

But then after some years when the state witnessed lack of development and economic disparities between the haves and have nots resentment started gearing up amongst the people of Assam.

Gogoi said: there is a total confusion and lack of cordination between the election commission, foreigners tribunal and the government and the entire screening process had been so haphahazard that even those working in the state police, Army, para military forces, government service, a former chief minister, a former deputy speaker, Bengali speaking Hindus and muslims, parents and childrens and those who’ve voted till 2016 n had their names in electoral rolls have been left out pre strategically with an eye on the elections of three states and the general election of 2019 by creating communal divide between the minority and majority and thus taking the unambiguous advantage, politically.

He catagorically said that when the Assam Accord was signed in 1985 between the AASU and the central govt lead by the then PM Rajiv Gandhi there was no mention of NRC to identify the foreigners, then how did it came into the picture now?

Taking credit for the execution of the NRC during his tenure as CM, Gogoi said that he is the father figure to launch this process but after the saffron party’s coming to power they have made the entire process confusive, haphahazard and tricky by even sidelining the majority of the genuine voters and the Indian citizens despite the fact that Bangladesh has already refused to admit and accept a single immigrant into their country, unambiguously saying that nobody has migrated into Assam from Bangladesh.

Gogoi addmitted that foreigners should be identified and deported but the process should be honest, genuine, transparent and systematic but unfortunately the visionless leaders of BJP , particularly the party chief Amit Shah is capitalising the whole issue for political gains by sidelining 40 lakh people from the NRC.

Answering a journalist’s query Gogoi said that he is a real father of this project to identify the real foreigners and had geared up the process but after 2010 the AASU deliberately resorted to the coercive practices in the state, allegedly killing people and stopped the process of identification of illegal immigrants.

We again finalised the fresh and credible modalities and submitted the draft report to the union govt which was agreed upon.

But unfortunately everything have been distorted and derailed. The current government has incurred more than 1200 crores in this entire process which was fully hapha hazard, confusive, discriminatory and prejudiced that left out a whopping 40 lakh people out of the national register of citizens creating chaos and uncertainty in the state and the country.

He termed this as the insult and violation of the preamble of the constitution and emphatically said that the government should make it specifically clear as to how will it tackle this issue of exclusion of the 40 lakh Assamese from the NRC.

Gogoi said the NRC issue is purely a humanitarian problem. Those whose names are in the voters list and other genuine citizens who’ve lost their documents in natural calamities etc should be included in the NRC.

He revealed that he has written to the PM and HM on this vexed issue demanding justice for the genuinely distressed and eligible citizens majority of whom have been left out n are muslims as well as well as Hindus.