Laika-Dhodia people will be rehabilitated soon, says Himanta Biswa Sarma

JONAI: Assam finance and education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today reassured the people of Laika-Dodhia villages of Dibru Saikhowa National Park that the state government would rehabilitate them at the earliest.

Addressing the golden jubilee celebrations of Takam Mising Porin Kebang at Jonai Higher Secondary School ground here, the senior minister said: “The people of Laika-Dodhia will be rehabilitated at the earliest. I promise on behalf of the government that we will fulfill our commitment. I also promise that we will keep our promise.”

The people of the forest villages, mostly belonging to the Mising community who were displaced from Murkonselek in Dhemaji district by the earthquake of 1950, have been staging a demonstration in front of deputy commissioner’s office at Tinsukia for nearly a month demanding their permanent settlement.

He also said that the state government was committed to provide more constitutional power to the Mising Autonomous Council. “We have sent our recommendation in this regard to the Centre,” he said.

Linking the vandalism of Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra during anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests with the subsequent demand by a Congress leader for setting up a Miah Museum in Assam, Sarma said it is high time the indigenous people stand up against the “aggression of a certain section of people who have already grabbed huge portions of land in different parts of lower and central Assam”.

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Exhorting the Mising community to be part of the education revolution in the state, the minister said under the new education policy the state government would have to recruit at least 43,000 more teachers over the next five years to ensure imparting education in local languages in different parts of the state.

“The new education policy has provisions to ensure that no language or culture will extinct in the future. But to implement this, it will be challenging task for the government over the next five years because it will be a question of initiating a complete new system,” he said.