Politics / Assam

GUWAHATI, May 31 – It seems that the State’s efforts at power reforms may go haywire as the Assam State Electricity Board (ASEB) authorities’ failure to include a sum of around Rs 1,900 crore for the terminal benefit of the Board employees. The Board had earlier formulated a proposal for introducing reforms in the power sector worth Rs 1,200 crore for the purpose of availing a loan worth 250 million dollars from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The latest stand-off in the ASEB following the agitational programme announced by the State wing of the National Coordination Committee of...

Jorhat, May 30: Minister of state for defence Bijoy Krishna Handique today said the Manmohan Singh government was not averse to peace talks with militant groups of Assam on foreign shores, provided there were no more strings attached. “When you look at the world as a global village, holding talks in another country should not be a problem,” he said during the first visit to his constituency, Jorhat, since being included in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government.

Handique said starting a dialogue with any militant group was more important than deciding where to talk.

“Why...

Guwahati, May 30: The BJP today decided to serve a showcause notice to music maestro Bhupen Hazarika for his absence from the party’s crucial two-day brainstorming session. Hazarika was invited to the meeting, but did not attend and gave no reason for staying away. “We will send him a letter seeking his explanation for not attending the meeting that concluded today,” Indramoni Bora, the party’s state unit president, said. The meeting was convened to analyse the party’s performance in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

Hazarika was the party’s only Lok Sabha candidate who did not attend the...

GUWAHATI, May 30: Keeping 2006 Assembly elections in view, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) has started the process of rebuilding the party and a thorough review of the performance of the party in the last general elections will be held in a four-day meeting to be held from June 1. In the last general elections, the regional party under a new leadership managed to win two seats and the most notable achievement for the party is the victory of Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh constituency, known as the stronghold of the Congress. Sonowal managed to defeat the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee...

Dibrugarh, May 29: Talks between the Consultative Committee of Planters’ Associations (CCPA) and the Asom Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS) remained inconclusive today on the demand for hiking daily labour wages of the tea gardens located in the Brahmaputra Valley. ACMS general secretary Madhusudhan Khandait, who has already demanded a 40 per cent hike in the daily labour wages, said here today that the three-hour-long meeting could not yield significant results. The members representing the CCPA strongly opposed the hike in any form.

The last three-year bilateral agreement between the CCPA and...

GUWAHATI, May 29 – More than six months have passed since the day the interim body of the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) assumed office, but till date, the State Government has not been able to complete the process of transfer of departments to the Council. BTC spokesman Khampa Borgoyari, who is also an executive member of the Interim Council, told The Assam Tribune that as per the Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) signed between the Central and State Governments and the Bodo Liberation Tiger (BLT), the State Government would have to transfer 40 Departments and subjects to the Council and the...

Silchar, May 28: The beleaguered tea industry in the Barak Valley region has appealed to the Tarun Gogoi government to review its minimum wage notification for tea workers issued on February 1 last year. In particular, the tea estates in the Barak Valley, comprising Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi districts, have spurned a recent Assam government move to usher in parity in the payment of daily-rated wages between tea workers in the Brahmaputra and Barak Valleys.

Both the Indian Tea Association (ITA) and the Tea Association of India (TAI) made this clear at a high-level discussion with the...

GUWAHATI, May 27 – The Assam Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has pulled up the Army over the atrocities committed on innocent people including some office-bearers of the All Assam Students Union (AASU) in Nalbari district and deputed a team of the Commission headed by its SP (Investigation) for an on-the-spot report. The inquiry team will submit its report within a fortnight. It has also issued notice to the Deputy Commissioner, Nalbari, and called for a detailed report on the incident within two weeks. The Commission further forwarded the complain petition of the aggrieved people to the...

Kokrajhar, May 26: The Kokrajhar District Tribal Sangha has demanded creation of new tribal belts and blocks on plains of Assam. In a memorandum to Dilip Singh Bhuria, chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Areas and Scheduled Tribes, the tribal body also demanded eviction of “illegal encroachers” from the existing tribal belts and blocks in the state.

The memorandum said largescale influx of Bangladeshis and other non-tribal people of the state into the existing 45 tribal belts and blocks in the plains has made the tribals a minority in their own land.

Transfer of land to non-...

GUWAHATI, May 26 – Though the anti-smuggling operations by the Border Security Force (BSF) along the Indo-Bangla border have been paying rich dividends, the border guarding agency has not been able to completely check smuggling mainly because of the terrain along the border. Seizure of smuggled goods by the BSF increased considerably in the last few years with the increase in the strength of the border guarding force along the Indo-Bangla border. Only late last night, more than 200 kilograms of ganja worth about Rs 12 lakh was seized by BSF near the Mahamaya char in Dhubri district. BSF...