BJSM urges ‘O Boro’ organizations to desist from anti-tribal activities

Our Correspondent

KOKRAJHAR: In a scathing attack on non-Bodo organizations, the Bodoland Janajati Suraksha Mancha (BJSM) on Monday said that O Boro organizations were based outside BTC and they had no business to interfere in the working of BTC tribal political-administrative institution.

The president of the BJSM, Janaklal Basumatary, while countering the leaders of some O Boro organizations claiming O Boros to constitute 80 per cent in BTC area, said that O Boros constitute 80 per cent illegal encroachers in tribal reserve land in tribal belts and blocks in the council. He said they had no land rights and political rights in the tribal belts and blocks of BTC and were liable to be evicted as per provision of Chapter X of Assam Land and Land Revenue Regulation Act, 1886 as amended in 1947.

“They are tribal land aggressors and law breakers. They destroy peace and tranquillity in the tribal protected society. For these reasons the duty of the government is to provide all possible protection to tribal people in their protected reserved land,” he said, adding that the O Boros consist of Hindu and Muslim migrants of Bangladesh and West Bengal who had no land rights in tribal belts and blocks, just like the migrant Rajbongshis from Rangpur, Dinajpur districts. He also said that only the indigenous Rajbongshis who had converted from Modahi, Boro and Rabha communities were protected class of people in the tribal belts and blocks of erstwhile undivided Goalpara district.

Basumatary added that O Boro people had no constitutional or legal right to call bandh to disturb peace and tranquillity in tribal protected land. He appealed to the O Boro activists to desist from anti-tribal activities.

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