Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday claimed that four lakh to five lakh Miya voters will be deleted when the special intensive revision of electoral rolls takes place in the state and said that his job is to “make them suffer”.
“What ‘vote chori’ [vote theft] means to us?” Sarma asked while speaking to reporters. “Yes, we are trying to steal some Miya votes. Ideally, they should not be allowed to vote in Assam. They should be able to vote in Bangladesh.”
He added: “We have made arrangements so that they cannot vote in Assam. But this is preliminary. When the [special intensive revision] comes to Assam, four to five lakh Miya votes will have to be cut.”
In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.
Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.
Assam is not among the 12 states and Union Territories where the Election Commission is conducting the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls. The poll panel is separately conducting a “special revision” of the voter list in the state, which is similar to the usual updates to the electoral roll.
The state is expected to head for Assembly polls in three to four months.
“So, let the Congress abuse me as much as they want,” the chief minister told reporters. “But my job is to make the Miya people suffer.”
Sarma made the comments on the sidelines of a government event in Digboi in Assam’s Tinsukia district.
Reacting to Sarma’s comments, Congress leader Aman Wadud said that the chief minister had “made the Constitution absolutely ineffective” in Assam.
The chief minister’s remark came three days after he said that only Miya Muslims were being served notices under the “special revision” of electoral rolls in the state.
Several Opposition parties have accused the BJP of conspiring to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the state’s electoral rolls amid the exercise and filed police complaints.
On Saturday, Sarma said that there was “nothing to hide”.
“We are giving them trouble,” the chief minister had said, referring to his earlier statements that “Miyas” would face problems in his regime. He added that serving them notices as part of the special revision exercise was a way to “keep them under pressure”.
A day later, the chief minister said that the eviction drives in the state were only targeting Miya Muslims and not Assamese people.
Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016, several demolition drives have been conducted in the state, mostly targeting areas populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims.
Sarma claimed earlier this month that the government has reclaimed close to 1.5 lakh bighas of land in the course of the eviction drives.
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