Following the deployment of Army, peace is gradually returning in violence hit Bodo-heartland of Assam as no fresh incident of rioting or arson has been reported in past 72 hours.
Curfew has been relaxed in Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri, although night curfew is still continuing. Violence, which had been raging since July 18 between an indigenous tribe and suspected illegal Bangladeshi nationals, has left at least 58 people dead and as many as 4 lakh people displaced.
On Monday home minister P Chidambaram visited violence hit areas to take stock of the current situation and also conversed with inmates of relief camps. “Right now our priority is to restore peace and enable displaced people to return to their villages. All other matters can be addressed later on,” said Chidambaram.
Three out of four districts of Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) – Kokrajhar, Chirang and Baksa, and adjoining districts of Bongaigaon and Dhubri (all in Lower Assam) have been affected due to the ongoing riots.
BTAD, which also comprises of Udalguri, and formed following the signing of the historic Bodo Accord in 2003, witnessed similar flare-up in 2008. There has always been a simmering tension in BTAD due to unabated influx of illegal Bangladeshis, which was posing a serious challenge to the demographic profile of the area, as it was doing to the whole of Assam. All the four BTAD districts are bodo-tribe-inhabited districts.
BTC chief Hagrama Mohilary too had pointed his fingers at influx issue as the real reason behind communal flare-ups in BTAD. “Indigenous Muslims, with whom the Bodo people have been living in peace for ages, have informed us that illegal immigrants from Bangladesh were fuelling tension in the BTAD area and were instigating the present violence,” said Mohilary.
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“We had signed the Bodo-Accord in 2003 for the development of Bodo tribes and not with the intention to help illegal Bangladeshis to enter into the area,” said LK Advani, who too toured the violence hit areas on Monday.
It was the NDA government, of which Advani was the Deputy Prime Minister, which signed the Bodo-Accord.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who visited Kokrajhar on Saturday, had announced a financial assistance of Rs. 300 crore for “rehabilitation”, “development programmes” and for construction of houses under Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) in the violence hit areas.