Border with B’desh to be sealed: BJP

KV Prasad

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 21

The BJP today emphasised it remains committed to implement the vision document for Assam in toto, underlining the new government will work to complete fencing of India-Bangladesh border and update National Register of Citizens work to detect illegal migrants in the state.

“We will work to secure the interests of Indian citizens in Assam, protect their identity so that they can live with pride and take steps to detect illegal migrants,” Sarbananda Sonowal told The Tribune here flanked by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, considered the chief architect behind the party’s unprecedented success in this gateway to the Northeast.

Sonowal, who arrived here from Guwahati to discuss government formation with party leaders, said people of the state have entrusted BJP with a Himalayan responsibility and his task would be work hard and carry people along.

The 53-year-old Sonowal, currently a Sports Minister in the Modi Government, is scheduled to be elected leader of the BJP legislature party tomorrow at Guwahati and take oath as the Chief Minister on Tuesday.

On his part, Madhav said the state government will work to complete the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to stop infiltration, enact laws to further the objective and work with alacrity to fence entire 263-kilometer long border it shares with Bangladesh.

Of the 260-odd km border, 224 km of the 229-km sanctioned is already fenced while some 40-odd km is riverine area.

The process of updating of the NRC is going on and the new government, Madhav said, will complete it at the earliest. The final list was to be published on January 1 this year as per a Supreme Court order two years ago, but the verification process is not yet complete with some 3 per cent work remaining.

According to reports, some 68 lakh people have submitted documents for inclusion in the NRC and once finalised, it could set into motion procedure to deport illegal migrants who entered Assam after 1971.

The issue of illegal migrants from Bangladesh has been a long festering problem that led to the Assam agitation in the 1980s steered by All Assam Students Union, whose product Sonowal is. Nearly a decade ago, as Asom Gana Parishad MP, Sonowal won a major victory after Supreme Court struck down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal, a key proviso in the Assam Accord.