Guwahati: The All Assam Minorities Students’ Union (AAMSU) in a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday alleged that minority communities were being subjected to “harassment” by the Assam government in the name of arbitrary, selective, and illegal eviction spree.
Pointing out that the evicted people were now being forced to live in the open, the student body called for the Prime Minister’s intervention for proper rehabilitation of the displaced people by providing them with land pattas’ and other basic amenities.
The AAMSU condemned the brute force used to evict poor people from their homestead during the eviction drive in Gorukhuti in Darrang district in September which had left two persons dead.
The union also urged PM Modi for restarting the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updating process and completing it within a stipulated time frame.
The memorandum addressed to the Prime Minister was handed over to police officers at the demonstration site at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, AAMSU advisor Ainuddin Ahmed said.
In the memorandum, a copy of which was made available to journalists here, members of the student body placed grievances of the people of Assam, particularly the minority communities living in the state, and sought the PM’s intervention for redressal of the same.
The union claimed that the Assam government has engaged itself in an arbitrary, selective, and illegal eviction spree by evicting genuine Indian citizens from their homestead without rehabilitating them.
Acting on orders of the Gauhati High Court, the state government on Monday launched another eviction exercise in Lumding reserve forest in Hojai district.
The AAMSU said though a large section of the people of the minority community has settled on the river banks in the state and made use of the fertile soil over the years, they have also been victims of flood and erosion leading to their frequent migration to other habitable lands. Maintaining that it is the Constitutional obligation of the government to rehabilitate such displaced people, successive governments have failed to do so, the AAMSU claimed.
Expressing concern over the alleged attacks on minority Hindus in Bangladesh, the union requested the prime minister to ensure the safety and security of those people through diplomatic channels. Referring to Tripura, the student body expressed hope that perpetrators of hate crimes should be dealt with strictly.
To improve the literacy rate among the minority communities, the AAMSU appealed to the Prime Minister for the establishment of a new university, a Sainik School, and a campus of the Aligarh Muslim University in Assam.