Assam Accord no solution, signed under Congress ‘duress’: Himanta Biswa Sarma

New Delhi, March 2, 2019:

Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s incendiary comments during the India Today Conclave 2019 on Friday have taken the entire Northeast region by storm.

Responding to AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi’s allegations that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill violates the Assam Accord, Biswa Sarma said that the Assam Accord, which was signed in 1985, was signed under ‘duress’ and further added that it is not the ‘solution’ to Assam’s problems. “Assam Accord was signed under the dictation of the then-Congress leadership. People of Assam by-and-large now know that Assam Accord is not a solution”.

The Minister, who is popularly known as the ‘Chanakya of Northeast’ also said that he has been opposing the Accord since 1985 and stated that the cut-off date for citizenship in the Accord should have been 1951 and not 1971.

The Minister, who has recently come under direct fire of the indigenous people of the Northeast region due to his attempts to impose the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, has continued to stoke the flames of communalism by announcing that the Government wants to give Citizenship to Hindus only.

“We are just giving Citizenship to Hindus, we have given a whole country, Pakistan, to Muslims”, he announced, justifying the Government’s stand to give shelter to ‘persecuted (non-Muslim) minorities’ from the Muslim-majority countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Despite saying that he does not differentiate based on communal lines, Biswa Sarma has stated that Assam politics is being ‘hijacked’ by Muslims who have migrated to Assam after 1951.