Assam wants asylum for victims of religious persecution

Guwahati, July 16 (IANS) The Assam government Wednesday decided to request the Centre to frame a policy for granting asylum on humanitarian grounds to people who fled their countries due to religious persecution and discrimination and taken refuge in India.

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had submitted a memorandum to the then prime minister Manmohan Singh April 20, 2012, pleading that Indian citizens who had to flee due to religious persecution and discrimination at the time of partition should not be treated as foreigners on humanitarian grounds.

The decision assumes significance considering the state's history of agitation against infiltration.

The state had witnessed a six-year-long anti-foreigners movement 1979-1985 in protest against the infiltration to the state mainly from neighbouring Bangladesh.

The movement led by the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) culminated successfully after the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi signed the historic Assam Accord in 1985.

According to the clauses of the Assam Accord, those who entered Assam after 1971 must be detected and deported from the state.

AASU adviser Samujjal Bhattacharyya Wednesday said the clauses of Assam Accord must be implemented as far as the issue of illegal infiltration was concerned.

"This seems to be a conspiracy of the Congress government to ensure their vote bank politics. Assam has already taken enough burden of the illegal infiltration by accepting those illegal infiltrators who came prior to 1971. However, a small state like Assam cannot take any further burden and those who came after 1971 must leave the state," he said.

Farmers' group Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) termed the cabinet cabinet "illegal".

"Those who came to Assam after March 25, 1971 must leave the state," KMSS leader Akhil Gogoi said, and warned that they would start a mass movement against this decision.