Government violating protective mechanism of tribal belts and blocks: BJSM

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOKRAJHAR: Coming down heavily against the move of the BJP-led State Government to issue land pattas to all in BTC, the Bodoland Janajati Suraksha Mancha (BJSM) on Thursday said the move violated the protective mechanism of tribal belts and blocks and protected lands.

In a statement, the president of the BJSM, Janaklal Basumatary said that there was restriction of land rights in Assam land law and 6th schedule law in Assam and BTC where migrants are not permitted to transact land, immovable property in tribal belts and blocks of Assam land law and law of 6th schedule BTC administration. "In violation of this law, the government pushed the illegal Muslim migrants to the protected notified tribal belt and blocks area and pushed Jharkhandi migrants in the reserved forest area of BTC and used them to counter the tribal concentration in the predominant tribal area so that their separate state demand fails. Now the government is issuing statements about giving land pattas all these illegal migrants and illegal encroachers in violation of the land laws of the State of Assam," he said, adding that no land patta could be issued to anybody without survey and settlement conducted in particular locality.

He said, "The announcement of the government to issue land patta within 15 days is illegal without conduct of survey and settlement. This is another bluff by the BJP government to attract votes and it is direct assault to tribal protected land rights."

Basumatary said that the ruling party was utilizing the state machinery in their political campaign for the upcoming election which was a great disadvantage in fulfilling tribal political aspiration. "The notified 6th schedule administration area is going to be dismantled by excluding villages from notified tribal area BTC. The NDFB cadres are believed to have been distributed cheques of Rs. 4 lakh each for rehabilitation but the cheque can be withdrawn only after two years."

On the monitoring of developmental schemes, Basumatary said, "The DCs are looking after the implementation of schemes from both the Central and State governments and they are implementing the same through BTC administration. Now in the BTR agreement, the same work is vested and the DCs and SPs are heads of the districts of general administration. Their services are placed under general administration. Their Annual Confidential Reports (ACR) are written by the respective higher authorities of the general administration and their performance is evaluated by the authority concerned of the State Government. The performance report by BTC authority has no effect on their ACR."

He added that Home and General Administration subjects had not been given to BTC and as such, the district law and order and general administrators like DC, SP, DIG and IGP were not under BTC administration but under the control of the State Government. He said, "If the government is planning to transfer this administration to BTC it means that they are planning to bring back the BTC council administration to the general administration and so getting performance report from DCs does not add any power or credit of BTC by BTR agreement."

The BJSM leader said that making the Bodo language as associate official language of Assam was nothing but a repeat of the already granted associate official language status of Bodo people instead of the legally deserved official language status as per the Constitution. Basumatary alleged that the BTR had reduced the national identity of the Bodo people. This had been utilized by the ruling party to attract the non-Boro and non-tribal voters and Bodo votes had been divided among tribals, he said. He further said that this move was BJP's game plan for capturing BTC assembly constituencies by overriding the tribal reserved political rights.

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