Amit Shah in Assam. The BJP and the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) will jointly fight the assembly polls in Assam, BJP president Amit Shah announced, adding they will end infiltration from Bangladesh if they take power in the state.
Blaming the Congress government in Assam for the continuing infiltration, Shah said the BJP was determined not to let illegal infringe upon the rights of people in Assam and the Bodoland region.
Shah said this at a public rally organised by the BPF to mark Bodoland Day.
“Infiltration started in Assam after the Congress resorted to vote bank politics,” Shah said.
“The infiltrators from Bangladesh have spread across the state. They have infringed upon the rights of local youths, be they from tea gardens or Hindi-speaking community or Bodoland.
“If a BJP-BPF government comes to power in Assam, we are going to ensure that there is no infiltration in Assam,” Shah said.
The BJP president termed the alliance between his party and the BPF a historic one and said it will go a long way in ensuring development in the state, and the Bodo areas in particular.
“We have decided to contest the Assam elections together with the BPF. This is not a political decision but one for the development of Bodoland. This is going to be historic for Assam.”
The BPF was earlier allied with the Congress but has moved closer to the BJP ahead of assembly elections this year.
Referring to the 1962 war with China, Shah alleged that then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had bid goodbye to the people of Assam and the northeast as Chinese troops invaded.
“It is because of the brave soldiers of India that Assam is today a part of India,” he said.
Shah hit out at Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi.
He said Assam had been left behind on the development front in the past 15 years when the Congress was in power.
“For 15 years there has only been corruption in Assam… Women are not safe in the state. And where women are not safe, the state can’t progress.
“One crore people live below the poverty line in Assam. Thirty-six percent have no access to electricity. The number of unemployed stands at 23 lakh now,” said Shah.
With an eye on the forthcoming assembly election, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Wednesday unveiled a draft vision document titled “Vision Assam-2030: Everything for Everyone-Achieving inclusive and Sustainable Development”.
Unveiling the document at a function at the Assam Administrative Staff College, he said it envisions a transformed future for the people of Assam, free from all forms of deprivation, inequities and insecurity to be achieved within the next 15 years.
With this, Assam has become the “first state in the world” to have a vision document on Sustainable Development Goals, Gogoi claimed.
“This has been one of the long-felt desires of the government for immaculately articulating a development vision where all the people of Assam become stakeholders and they participate in the development process of the state.
“I am committed to realise Vision Assam-2030 where environment and development goes in sync with the other,” Gogoi said.
He said it will give a structured, broad framework to give a direction to all efforts of the government to eradicate poverty, illiteracy, hunger for ensuring health lives and achieving gender equality through women empowerment.
“Though there are problems, we need to find remedies to the problems to realise an Assam where inclusive and sustainable development becomes the crux of the society,” Gogoi said while seeking cooperation from sections of the society to extend their cooperation for the document.
Gogoi said that Jeffrey Sachs, one of the stakeholders of the Sustainable Development Goals, interacted with him over Skype from New York and lauded the Assam government’s achievement on being the first state in the world to have a vision framework for Sustainable Development Goals.
Sachs also informed him that he will share the Vision Assam-2030 with the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. (IANS)