GUWAHATI, May 12 – The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) today announced a series of agitational programmes demanding holding of a joint session of the Parliament to repeal the controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act. The AASU today also demanded immediate steps to seal the Indo-Bangla border to check fresh influx, implementation of all the clauses of the Assam Accord within a specific time frame, constitutional safeguard to indigenous people of Assam and to prepare the national register of citizens.
In a release here today, Prabin Boro and Amiya Kumar Bhuyan, the president and general secretary respectively of the AASU, said that on May 17, the AASU members will bring out processions in all the district headquarters of the State. On May 20, the local units of the AASU will hold meeting with prominent citizens seeking their suggestions for the steps needed to be taken to put pressure on the Central Government for the fulfilment of the demands raised by the AASU.
The AASU welcomed the Union Cabinet’s decision to repeal the IMDT Act. But at the same time, the AASU pointed out that the Act cannot be repealed only by Cabinet decision and the Centre must convene a joint session of the Parliament to repeal the Act. Boro and Bhuyan said that the people of Assam sacrificed lot during the six-year-long Assam movement, but the accord, signed in 1985, is yet to be implemented fully for the solution of the problem of influx of foreigners. The problem of illegal migration has assumed alarming proportion but all the political parties are silent over the issue only to get the votes of the Bangladeshi nationals.
The AASU also demanded updating of the National Register of Citizens, 1951 and asserted that those who came to Assam before 1971 can stay in the State irrespective of their cast or religion but none of those who migrated to the State after 1971, the cut off year for detection and deportation of foreigners as per the Assam Accord, should be allowed to stay in the State.