Senior Advocate Upamanyu Hazarika Criticizes ULFA Accord as Insufficient for Indigenous Rights

The Senior Advocate and Convener of the Prabrajan Virodhi Manch (PVM) Upamanyu Hazarika on Wednesday claimed that the ULFA (pro-talk) faction's Accord with the Government though voluminous with a lot of content, in actual fact, it is an accord for setting up cultural centres in different districts of Assam and an institute for preservation of Bhaona culture.

He mentioned that the so-called 1.85 lakh crore projects are nothing but on-going or upcoming projects of the Central and State Governments in the state.

Addressing a press conference, Hazarika said, “The ULFA which originally started with a key goal of pushing out infiltrators and securing rights for the indigenous of the state, have settled for some mere economic incentives on paper amounting to nothing. A key feature of this Accord is that, all the promises made whether economic, forest rights, land rights are left to the discretion of the Government for their consideration and discloses a wrongful application of the law as far NRC, voting, etc is concerned.”

He said adding four vital points terming this is obvious and evident from a bare reading of the accord of December 29, 2023:-

Firstly, there is no reference whatsoever to preservation of indigenous identity and conferment of indigenous rights either in respect of land or employment. It is an acknowledged and admitted fact that indigenous will turn into a minority in Assam by 2040 or even earlier, a key political plank of the BJP to consolidate non-migrant votes, however, there is no reference or any assurance/promise regarding protection of indigenous in land or in employment, which have been a subject matter of 3 reports - the Assam Accord Clause 6 Committee Report, the Brahma Committee, and Upamanyu Hazarika Committee Report.

Secondly, in the political sphere the promises by the Government relate to issues which are either already part of existing law or in disregard of existing law. For instance, Clause 2.5 provides that "no person will be a voter in more than one constituency." There is already a provision to this effect in Section 17 of the Representation of People's Act 1950 where there is a prohibition in respect of being a voter in more than one constituency. Another instance is of clause 5.2, the promise to undertake NRC reverification  after conclusion of a pending matter in the Supreme Court. This is again completely erroneous, as the Citizenship Act 1955 and the rules framed there under empower the Central Government to carry out re-verification, the sanction of Court not required.

This erroneous understanding of the legal position is reflective of the Assam Accord which at the time of its execution adopted a cut off date of March 25, 1971 for grant of citizenship to migrants from Bangladesh, which is of complete contradiction to Article 6 of the Constitution of India, under which the cut off date is July 19, 1948, Hazarika asserted.

Thirdly, as far as the so-called economic package is concerned, most of the projects, if not all, are already part of on-going developmental packages and as ridiculous as the approach road to the proposed tunnel under the Brahmaputra from Gohpur to Numaligarh or the two-laning of the road from Jorhat to Majuli. Fact is that both the tunnel and the proposed bridge are already in the process of execution and cannot be functional without an approach road. The purpose of its inclusion seems to be to embellish the number of projects for the purposes of publicity.

Fourthly, though a large number of promises have been made but most of such promises are qualified for the consideration of the State or the Central Government, with phrases like "will consider", "agrees to consider", "may review" or otherwise worded in general and vague terms.

“It is obvious that there is no sincere intent on the part of the Government to do anything for the rights of the indigenous people, while indigenous people are primary supporters of this Government, however, they are only given promises by forming committees and signing Accords like this. Whereas, the Bangladeshi migrants actually have schemes for them Operation Basundhara 2.0 of November 2021, under which 14 lakh bighas (5 lakh acres) of PGR-VGR land was earmarked for all those migrants who came from Bangladesh to Assam until 2011 and only a few days back a scheme for "minority" rickshaw pullers in Guwahati, which are mostly Bangladeshi Muslim migrants,” Hazarika stressed further.

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