From Our Correspondent
Guwahati : A day after its MPs snatched Constitution (119th Amendment) Bill 2013 from foreign minister Salman Khurshid in Rajya Sabha preventing him from tabling it for ratifying the land boundary agreement (LBA) between India and Bangladesh, the regional Asom Gana Parishad on Wednesday burnt effigies of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi here denouncing the land swap deal signed with Bangladesh by the prime ministers of both the countries on September 6 last year.
The AGP leaders to oppose land swapping with Bangladesh and they believed that Assam would lose land if the agreement was tried to be put into effect on the ground.
“The AGP will continue with strong opposition to the land boundary agreement and under no circumstances we will allow even an inch of Assam’s land to go to Bangladesh,” AGP president and former Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta said.
In Rajya Sabha on Tuesday no sooner had Salman Khurshid stood up to introduce the Constitution (119th Amendment) Bill, 2013, AGP MPs, Kumar Dipak Das and Birendra Kumar Baishya snatched the document from him and they termed the Bill ‘a betrayal of Assam’.
The land boundary agreement (LBA) that was signed between India and Bangladesh has been strongly opposed in Assam by main opposition parties, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the influential All Assam Students’ Union (AASU).
These parties are very vociferous against chief minister Gogoi for agreeing to handover Assam’s land to Bangladesh without consulting the people of Assam and to appease his ‘masters’ in the UPA government.
On the other hand, Gogoi claims that the land pact will just pave the way for completion of the fencing along the Bangladesh border in Assam as border dispute will be resolved for good.
Giving facts of the pact Gogoi claims that land will provide Assam with 1240 acres of disputed border areas while Bangladesh will get only 357.4 acres. He said Bangladesh would get 193 acres of adversely possessed land at Boroibari in Mankachar sector of Dhubri district and 74.5 acres land out of total 455 acres in Pallathal Tea Estate in Karimganj district.