Guwahati, Oct 18: The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) has called for foolproof revision of the electoral rolls in Assam to delete the names of Bangladeshi nationals living illegally in the State.
Talking to The Assam Tribune, AASU chief adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya said that the historic Assam movement started when names of foreigners were detected during a revision of the voter lists in Malgaldoi parliamentary constituency. He alleged that till date, the Election Commission has not been able to prepare correct electoral rolls by deleting the names of Bangladeshi nationals from it.
Bhattacharya stressed that the rights of indigenous people of the State must be protected in the face of demographic change. Referring to an order of the Gauhati High Court, he said that a Pakistani national managed to enter India through Bangladesh and he not only got his name included in the electoral rolls but also contested in elections. “This can happen only in Assam,” the Court noted.
Bhattacharya pointed out that though a National Register of Citizens (NRC) was prepared under the monitoring of the Supreme Court, the AASU was not satisfied with that and demanded revision of the NRC.
The Central and State Governments are claiming that they are not happy with the electoral rolls but they have not yet filed affidavit in the Supreme Court in this regard, he said, and demanded that both the governments must file affidavits in the apex court for revision of the NRC.
On implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord, Bhattacharya said that the Central government had formed a committee headed by Justice Biplab Kumar Sharma to recommend measures for that. The State government has agreed to implement the recommendations which fall under its purview. But some major recommendations like reservation of seats in the Assembly, Parliament and local bodies fall under the purview of the Central government.
However, the Centre is yet to take any step in this regard. He suggested that a tripartite meeting involving the State and Central Governments and AASU should he organized to discuss the issue.