Members of the All Assam Koch Rajbongshi Sanmilani (AAKRS) are staging a massive rail blockade at Srirampur in Kokrajhar district of Assam.

Thousands of protestors have gathered at the rail tracks at Srirampur to stage their agitations since Sunday morning.

The protests have been staged in demand of Scheduled Tribe status for the community.

Meanwhile, the police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in huge numbers at the protest site to control the agitators and prevent any untoward incident.

It may be mentioned that, the Koch-Rajbangshi community have been demanding ST status since the 1960s. But it was only before the general election of 1996 that the demand gained momentum.

The then Narasimha Rao Government had promulgated the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order (Amendment) Ordinance on January 27, 1996, to include the Koch-Rajbangshis in the ST category.

A Bill seeking to replace the ordinance was also introduced in the Lok Sabha on February 29, 1996, but it lapsed with the dissolution of the tenth Lok Sabha.