NEW DELHI, May 12— Dubbing the move to repeal the controversial IMDT Act as BJP’s political gimmick, Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi has hinted on planning an action to counter the move, even as he said that the Central Government should have consulted him before tabling the Bill to repeal the Act. “I am the elected Chief Minister of the State and the Centre should have obtained my opinion before moving the Bill to repeal the Act,” a dejected Sri Gogoi said.
The Chief Minister started his move right from the top when he called on AICC president, Sonia Gandhi to apprise her of the fallout of the Central Government’s bid to scrap the Act, on the party in the state. He furnished her with data on the detection and deportation of illegal aliens in the State the role and functioning of the IMDT Tribunals and the census figures on decadal growth of population. That the Party’s highest decision-making body had passed a resolution opposing the repealing of the Act under the chairmanship of Smt Gandhi came in handy for Sri Gogoi. The Congress party had staged a walk out from Lok Sabha last Friday opposing the Bill when Deputy Prime Minister, L K Advani, tabled it.
Meanwhile, Sri Gogoi disclosed that he planning to call on all members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs headed by Congress leader, Pranab Mukherjee to dispel, what he termed propaganda against the IMDT Act, “Wrong propaganda has been going on that the Act was enacted to protect foreigners,” he asserted, claiming that whereas it was enacted to protect genuine Indian citizens from harassment. On his calling list are also leaders of the ruling NDA alliance some of whom like the Trinamool Congress and Telegu Desam Party (TDP) have reservations about rubbing the minorities the wrong way.
Reeling out statistics, Sri Gogoi said during the period 1986-2002 about 3.68 lakhs enquiries were conducted against suspected foreigners and were referred to the screening committees. These committees, which have senior police officers, could defect only 65,000 cases. Then out of these only 22,000 cased were disposed off. Only 11,000 were detected as foreigners of whom only 1,500 were deported. He further argued that the census figures have also reported that the growth rate of Assam has been less than the national average. “Clearly the census figures do not reflect that there has been a large number of infiltration into Assam.” The BJP has claimed that there are few lakhs foreigners are in Delhi, which does not have IMDT. So what is stopping the Central Government from detecting and deporting these illegal migrants?