From Our Special Correspondent
GUWAHATI: The All Assam Koch Rajbongshi Sanmilani (AAKRS), an influential organisation representing the Koch Rajbongshi community in the state, has threatened to intensify its agitation if the nearly three lakh people from the community left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are not reinstated as Indian citizens.
The group on Thursday staged a 12-hour Assam bandh in protest against the exclusion of not just those from the Koch Rajbongshi community but sons of the soil (bhumiputra) belonging to other indigenous groups as well.
“According to our estimates, close to six lakh indigenous people in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) region itself are among the 19.06 lakh left out of the final NRC published on August 31,” All Assam Koch Rajbongshi Sanmilani general secretary, Ranjit Kumar Roy told The Shillong Times on Thursday.
“This is gross injustice and we demand that the government should make immediate special arrangements to reinstate the excluded indigenous people through affidavits rather than making them face the ignominy of appealing before foreigners’ tribunals,” Roy said.
The 12-hour bandh affected life mainly in the BTAD areas on Thursday.
“The onus is therefore on the government to take corrective measures and see to it that legal aid is provided to the excluded people. Not one person from the community should be left out of the NRC,” he asserted. Koch Rajbongshis and five other indigenous communities of Assam have over the years been demanding Scheduled Tribe status.
“That is still in cold storage. Now to have so many from the community and other indigenous groups discarded from the citizens’ register is nothing but an insult,” Roy said.