Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday said that his government has set 1951 as the baseline year to identify Assamese natives for implementation of certain schemes under Clause 6 of the Assam Accord.
This came after the chief minister met members of the All Assam Students’ Union, the organisation that led the Assam Movement.
The Assam Accord was signed in 1985 between the Centre and the leaders of the Assam Movement, which was launched in 1979 to identify and deport undocumented immigrants. The Accord defined anyone who entered the country before the midnight of March 24, 1971, as an Indian citizen in Assam.
The state’s Bharatiya Janata Party government had announced on September 5 that it would implement most of the recommendations made by a Centre-appointed committee pertaining to Clause 6, which states that the government must enact constitutional, legislative and administrative measures to protect, preserve and promote the “cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people”.
The 14-member panel was set up by the Union home ministry in 2019 to implement Clause 6 of the Accord as there was no consensus on the legal definition of “Assamese people”.
The committee submitted its report, with 67 recommendations, in 2020 to Sarbananda Sonowal, Assam’s chief minister at the time.
On Wednesday, Sarma said there was “more or less 100 percent consensus” on implementing 40 of these recommendations that came under the jurisdiction of the state government, reported The Telegraph.
Another 12 recommendations required the Centre’s approval, while 15 were under the Centre’s exclusive jurisdiction.
Sarma said that a roadmap for implementing these 52 recommendations by April 2025 would be shared with the All Assam Students’ Union within a month.
When Sarma was asked about how his government plans to define an “Assamese” person, he said that 1951 had already been set as the baseline year for the implementation of the Mission Basundhara scheme, which deals with land issues.
Scroll asked Sarma, at a press conference on Wednesday, whether the creation of separate categories of citizens – by virtue of the 1951 cut-off – would have the effect of giving them disparate rights. “Everybody will not have the same rights,” Sarma said.
“We are doing it [Mission Basundhara] for the past three years,” he said. “In spirit, we have accepted the cut-off of 1951 in the context of specific recommendations of the panel. It’s not like the cut-off will apply when someone wants to apply for a driver’s licence. It is meant for certain schemes. It will not affect day to day life.”
“In the last Assembly session, we passed three land bills,” Sarma added. “We made 1951 as the cut-off year though we did not mention 1951. We said three generations. One generation is 25 years, so it is 1951.”
Also read: Panel formed by home ministry proposes definition of ‘Assamese people’ – to mixed responses in Assam
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