Amit Shah Promises ‘Infiltrator-Free’ Assam, Says Previous Congress Governments Encouraged Illegal Bangladeshis

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah today promised to identify every single illegal Bangladeshi infiltrator in Assam when the party comes to power once again.

Addressing a huge rally at Kaliabor (Assam) Thursday afternoon, Shah said that over the last five years, infiltration from Bangladesh has been successfully halted. “The task of identifying all the infiltrators residing in Assam now remains and we promise to throw each and every infiltrator out of Assam over the next five years,” Shah said to thunderous applause.

Shah’s choice of Kaliabor is significant since the BJP has allocated this Lok Sabha seat to its ally Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). The AGP has fielded Moni Madhav Mahanta, a former vice-president of the influential All Assam Students’ Union, to contest against former Congress chief minister Tarun Gogoi’s son Gaurav Gogoi from Kaliabor. By flagging off the Assam leg of his nationwide Lok Sabha campaign from Kaliabor, the BJP chief has sent a strong signal to the party’s allies. Mahanta, along with AGP chief Atul Bora, and many other AGP leaders shared the dais with Shah at Kaliabor.

Shah alleged the Congress had been patronising Bangladeshi infiltrators and had encouraged them to encroach on forest land at the Kaziranga National Park. “These infiltrators had turned into rhino poachers. Over the last three years, the Sarbananda Sonowal government has evicted these infiltrators from Kaziranga and the poaching of rhinos, the pride of Assam, has also stopped,” Shah said. He added that Bangladeshi infiltrators had also been evicted from the huge tracts of lands belonging to the Vaishnavite satras that they had occupied illegally under the patronage of the earlier Congress governments in the state.

The BJP chief said that while the 1985 Assam Accord has never been fully implemented by the Congress, the Modi government has started the process of implementing the crucial Clause 6 of the Accord.

Listing out the various projects and schemes for Assam initiated by the Modi government, Shah said more than Rs 4.5 lakh crore has been allocated to Assam over the past five years, as compared to the measly Rs 50,000 crore allocated during the five years of Congress rule from 2009 to 2014. Shah said that the next Modi government would accord more priority to Assam and the Northeast.