Gogoi blames Modi for closure of Cachar paper mill
Guwahati: Thanks to unabated poaching the precious one-horned rhino, the pride of Assam, has become a major election in Assam this time with political parties of all hues rising promising to protect the State Animal in response to rising concern over rhino poaching in the state especially in rhino abode in Kaziranga National Park (KNP).
Over 190 rhinos have been poached in Assam since 2001, when the ruling Congress came to the power giving the opposition BJP and the AGP a burning issue to whip up against the ruling Congress.
The BJP has gone to the extent of alleging the ruling Congress of having nexus with rhino poachers I view of killing of over 100 rhinos in the state during the last 15 years on Congress rule.
The BJP’s star campaigner Narendra Modi and president Amit Shah during their election rallies have called upon voters to press the EVM button besides the lotus symbol to put an end to rhino poaching for good.
“We have heard of Congress indulging in rampant corruption and siphoning out of public money, but it Assam it has even resorted to eating up the rhinos in the wild. So, on the poll day you press the EVM button to hunt down the rhino hunters,” Modi said at Bokakhat near Kaziranga National Park to woo voters.
BJP’s ally the regional Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) has promised in its manifesto to enact a more stringent law to deal with rhino poaching and setting up of eco sensitive zones inside wildlife protection areas for bolstering the existing protection measures meant for Scheduled animals in the wild.
The ruling Congress which often blames involvement of militants armed with sophisticated weapons in rhino poaching, has promised to put in force `state-of-the-art’ mechanism to protect the rhino especially those in Kaziranga wild.
The Congress maintains that the new generation poachers armed to the teeth have superior firepower compared to wildlife guards in Assam parks and that has resulted in rising incidents of rhino poaching.Wildlife conservationist and researcher, Dr Bibhab Talukdar said, “It is a good sign that political parties are promising to work towards protection of the endangered rhino.
We can only hope that those promises are turned into action in the ground in days to come.”
He said key to preventing rhino-poaching lied with setting up an effective intelligence network among fringe villagers about poachers’ movements and not only on arming forest guards with sophisticated weapons.
Meanwhile, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi blamed the Congress for the closure of 32,000 industries in Assam, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Monday retorted that the Centre was to blame for the closure of the Cachar paper mill that has affected the livelihood of one lakh people.
Gogoi slammed Modi’s “escapist attitude” and said the prime minister had turned a blind eye to the cause of the paper mill, in which production has remained suspended due to shortage of coal.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s escapist attitude has become apparently evident when he put the blame on the Congress for the closure of the Cachar mill, a unit of Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited, which is a central public sector undertaking… the central government is fully responsible for its premature and sudden closure,” Gogoi said.
“The NDA government at the Centre has not done anything substantial for the revival of the Cachar paper mill, thereby putting at stake the future of one lakh people directly and indirectly involved in the mill,” he said.
The Cachar paper mill, which has a capacity of producing one lakh tonnes of paper annually, uses about 550-600 tonnes of coal from Meghalaya every day. The problem started after the NGT ordered a ban on unscientific mining of coal in Meghalaya in May last year.