A CORRESPONDENT
SILCHAR: Citing the instances of Vidharba and Marathawada in Maharashtra and Kutch in Gujarat, Susmita Dev, the former MP sought the intervention of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accord Barak Valley the status of separate area within the State of Assam.
In a letter to Modi, Susmita, whose Rajya Sabha term ended on Friday, said that the Constitution accommodates everyone’s aspirations as reflected in Article 371 (A-J) which guarantees empowerment of the region that deserves special attention. “The Assam government is hell bent on the disempowerment of Barak Valley,” maintaining this Dev, who represented Silchar both in the State Assembly as well as in the Lok Sabha, said the BJP government led by the Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had discriminated against the Barak Valley in all sectors.
Referring to the recent delimitation, Dev said two Assembly segments in Barak Valley had been chopped off with no valid ground but the State government did not even bother to raise the issue with the Election Commission. “It is a betrayal of the people of Barak Valley,” she added. Raising serious doubts on the legality of the entire process of the delimitation, Dev informed the Prime Minister that she had written to the Law Ministry on July 7 but it fell on deaf ears. Dev furnished a list of poll promises made by the ruling party during the last election and how these promises were thrown in the dustbin.
She said, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram were carved out of Assam for their own emancipation, but Barak Valley with the largest concentration of linguistic minorities preferred to co-exist with every other community peacefully in Assam. But in return the interest of the linguistic minorities had been compromised repeatedly and even the constitutional protection under Article 350B falls flat in Assam, she pointed out. “We in Barak Valley should not be perceived as a colony of Assam as we contribute economically, socially and politically to the progress of Assam,” she added.
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