Guwahati, Sep 26 (PTI) The opposition in Assam on Thursday questioned whether Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has constitutional and legal rights to talk about the implementation of the Justice (Retd.) Biplab Kumar Sharma Committee report on Assam Accord as it was a central panel.
The Union Home Ministry had in January 2019 formed a high-level committee (HLC) headed by retired Union secretary M P Bezbaruah, but six of the nine people nominated as members of the committed declined to be part of it, following which the panel was reconstituted in July same year with 14 members and Justice (Retd.) Sharma as its chairman.
“The report has not been submitted to the Centre yet. Unless the MHA accepts it, how can the CM speak about implementation of the recommendations? Does he even have the constitutional and legal rights to speak on behalf of the Centre?” asked Assam Jatiya Parishad president Lurinjyoti Gogoi at a press conference here.
The CM cannot have the ownership of the report, which was prepared by an eminent panel formed by the central government, he added.
Showing the copy of the document, Gogoi, who was a member of the HLC as a general secretary of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), said the then joint secretary in the Union Home Ministry, Satyendra Garg, who was the Centre’s nominee in the panel, did not even sign the report.
“Corruption by Sarma’s government and family, wife’s huge property are big issues in people’s minds. He has raised the Assam Accord topic just to divert public attention,” he added.
Gogoi, who is also the secretary of United Opposition Forum Assam (UOFA), said the CM has been advocating bringing Hindu Bangladeshis into Assam through the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, but suddenly he has become a protector of indigenous people’s interests.
The Assam government and the AASU on Wednesday, for the first time, discussed the implementation of Justice Sharma committee’s recommendations on Clause 6 of the Assam Accord to protect the interests of the indigenous population.
“Panchayat polls are coming in the next few months and then the assembly elections are due in 2026. To recover his lost popularity, the CM is using the report as a political tool. There is absolutely no statement on acceptance and existence of the report by the Centre,” Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah said.
The report was in cold storage for more than four-and-half years like the National Register of Citizens and ST status to six communities, and it was dug out suddenly, he added.
On February 25, 2020, the committee had submitted its report on implementation of Assam Accord to the then Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal for handing it over to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Before the Assam Assembly polls in 2021, Sarma, who was a senior cabinet minister in the previous BJP government, had said that the government cannot implement the recommendations of the HLC as those are “far from legal reality”.
In October 2021, the Assam government had set up an eight-member committee to prepare a framework within three months for implementation of all clauses of the 39-year-old Assam Accord, especially the Clause 6 report prepared by the Justice Biplab Kumar Sarma panel. It is yet to submit the report.
Rajya Sabha MP Ajit Kumar Bhuyan alleged that the Assam CM is “fuelling his communal politics” with the report.
“Unfortunately, the AASU has allowed itself to be used in this politics. CM Himanta Biswa Sarma is engrossed with power only and AASU chief adviser Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharjya has also joined him,” he added.
Bhuyan also slammed Sarma for stating that the report would be implemented only in some parts of Assam, and said that the HLC had made the recommendations for the entire state.
The CM on Wednesday said the recommendations will apply only to the districts of the Brahmaputra Valley, and not in the three districts of Barak Valley and the Sixth Schedule areas of Dima Hasao, Karbi Anglong and Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR).
“The CM also said that there would be two different definitions of Assamese. How can that be possible? The committee clearly said that 1951 would be the cut-off year, but it is being altered to fulfill BJP’s communal agenda,” the MP said.
Regarding the definition of an indigenous Assamese, the CM claimed that the committee recommended using 1951 as a cut-off date in specific cases under Clause 6, but “this should not be assumed as a general cut-off for all day-to-day activities.” On September 4, the chief minister said that the Assam cabinet had decided to implement 57 of the 67 recommendations given by Justice Biplab Kumar Sarma Committee on Clause 6 of the Assam Accord.
The Assam Accord was signed in 1985 after a six-year long violent anti-foreigner movement. It stated, among other clauses, that names of all foreigners coming to Assam on or after March 25, 1971 would be detected, deleted from electoral rolls and steps would be taken to deport them. PTI TR TR ACD
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