AASU disassociates from reception committee

DIBRUGARH, February 2: In what can be termed as a setback to the preparations to the biggest ever session of the Asam Sahitya Sabha here, the district AASU unit today dropped a bombshell by announcing that the students' body is opting out from the official reception committee. While this is not a boycott of the session the dissociation means that the students would now have their own independent and parallel set up to cater to reception, hospitality and health care to the lakhs of people who would be thronging the Sahitya Sabha session from February 7 to 11. The students have been demanding of the Asam Sahitya Sabha to make its stand clear on several socio-economic issues which are staring at the face of the people. "We also wanted that the literary organisation graduate from just issuing press statements on issues involving the life and death of the State's indigenous people,' says AASU's information secretary, Bikul Chandra Deka. As the Sabha failed to respond to the students' demand within February 1, AASU decided to carry out its threat of dissociating itself from the official functions of the 66th session of the Sabha. The decision was taken today, Deka told The Assam Tribune. With the dissociation, all of the 2000 student volunteers drawn and selected for 'Sahitya Sabha duty" will no longer work for the reception committee of the session. They would function under the AASU banner with AASU badges on their chests, and operate from a make-shift office to be set up at the Swahid Bedi complex here at Chowkidinghee. "Our services for the delegates and visitors would be there, but without the Sabha badge," explained the president of the All Dibrugarh District Students' Union, Diganta Saikia. Severely condemning the "politicisation of the Asam Sahitya Sabha by Nagen Saikia and his cronies," AASU leaders here made no secret of their contempt for him. AASU leaders Diganta Saikia, Sunil Konwar and Bikul Chandra Deka said Saikia is commandeering the reception committee of the 66th Sahitya Sabha session in a 'despicable, dictatorial fashion." They added that it is at Saikia's insistence that the reception committee had to invite Mahanta to install the Lai Khuta here on January 3 and again invite him to the session's open meet. When contacted, Nagen Saikia denied the allegations levelled against him as "a figment of imagination" and revealed that the students are doing this because the reception committee refused to accept their demand of inviting two AASU leaders as special guests at one of the three open sessions. He said the students were advised to recommend names of writers or poets for invitation, but this suggestion was rejected. AASU raised matters like the Sahitya Sabha should make a stand on burning issues of the State, Saikia said, and added that the issues raised by AASU "can be addressed by the Sabha, not by a reception committee of a session of a Sabha." Meanwhile the UCO Bank today donated a packet containing five lakh entry tickets to the Book fair and the exhibition grounds of the 66th Sahitya Sabha session. The tickets were handed over to the reception committee of the session at a simple ceremony at the bank's Milannagar branch here. The packets were received on behalf of the committee by its advisor and Dibrugarh DC, Bani Kanta Pegu, and the committee's president, Tankeswar Borah.