From Our Correspondent
Guwahati: Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Saturday expressed satisfaction over the way the dialogue between the Government of India and United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).
Saying that the peace talks with ULFA was progressing in the right direction, Gogoi, however, said it would be too early to comment on possible outcome of dialogue.
Talking to reporters here, Mr Gogoi said, ” The talks are moving in the positive direction. “
” There are issues of both sides and all have not been taken up yet. We (both government and ULFA) are trying to adjust ourselves, ” he added.
He, however, said there were positive signals coming out of the process so far and it was heartening.
“We (Assam government) are willing to accommodate as much demand of the ULFA as possible so that a solution could be arrived at from the dialogue process soon,’’ Gogoi said.
A faction of the proscribed ULFA, led by ‘chairman’ Arabinda Rajkhowa, was engaged in peace parleys with the government and several rounds of talks had also been held between the two sides.
However, a hardliner faction of the outfit, led by ‘c-in-c’ Paresh Barua, had refused to enter the political negotiation, claiming that resolution of ‘Assam-India’ conflict was not possible within the ambit of the Indian Constitution.
He admitted that the anti-talks faction of the ULFA led by Paresh Barua was still recruiting vulnerable youth to its ranks and said the panacea for the problem was to create employment avenues in the State.
“Job creation will be the thrust of my government in the next fiscal 2013-14. We want to give much importance to the IT sector for its potential to create employment avenue and boost the economy. We are going to set up entrepreneurship and skill development centres all over the State to have a pool of skilled , employable human resources,” Gogoi said.
He said Assam government would approach the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi for assistance from the Centre in order to set its entrepreneurship and skill development programme on the roll.
He said updating the NRC was likely to be finalized in a meeting to be held in New Delhi on March 18 and work would be started first in eight districts –Nagaon, Jorhat, Sivasagar, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Golaghat, Sonitpur and Lakhimpur.
The All Assam Students Union (AASU), the spearhead in the agitation against illegal migration from Bangladesh, has been demanding that NRC of 1951 taking 1971 voters’ list in Assam as the base so that illegal migrants who have sneaked into the State after 1971 from Bangladesh could be easily detected and deported.
Prime Minister level tripartite talks with the AASU and Assam government had agreed on May 5, 2005 to update the NRC.
Assam government on Saturday decided to constitute an advisory board to advise the government on updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and on foreigners issue.
The board would be headed by Justice (retd.) K N Saikia as the chairman and include two other members — former state DGP Shankar Barua (IPS) and retired bureaucrat P K Choudhury.
Meanwhile, a cache of arms and ammunition was recovered by the Army from two locations in Lungkhor village under Maibang police station in Assam’s Dima Hasao district Friday.
Acting on a tip-off, the troops of 9 Madras regiment stationed at Maibang recovered the huge cache of arms and ammunition, though no arrest had been made yet, official sources said here on Saturday.
The cache of arms included two 9 mm pistols with magazine, four 12 bore guns, four Chinese grenade, two radio sets, two IEDs and a few detonators which were hidden in an old water tank.
Security sources suspected that the recovered arms belonged to Dimasa National Liberation Force. (with inputs from UNI)