Accusing the Centre of neglecting and ignoring the issues of Bodo people, three leading groups involved in the Bodoland statehood movement here on Thursday announced that they would relaunch their agitation from next week.
Also, while welcoming the ‘zero tolerance’ policy of the Assam Government regarding insurgency, the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU) appealed to the State and Central Government to look into the real issues behind insurgency and frame an effective policy that will stop the youth from joining the insurgent outfits.
ABSU president Pramod Boro said this while interacting with newsmen on Thursday and added that although the State and Central Government had adopted a ‘zero tolerance’ policy against the insurgents, they had failed to prevent the youth in Bodoland Territorial Areas Districts (BTAD) from joining the militants.
Meanwhile, the ABSU, National Democratic Front of Boroland (Progressive) and People's Joint Action Committee for Bodoland Movement said on Thursday they will block the national highways across Assam for five hours next week demanding solution to the problems of Bodo people.
"We had met Rajnath Singh before 2014 lok Sabha election. He had assured that if BJP came to power, it would look into our demand for a separate State and so we supported the party and suspended our agitation since January, 2014.
"But after coming to power, the BJP is just neglecting and ignoring us," Boro said.
Only a single round of talks were held in June last year "despite meeting Rajnath Singh seven times and Kiren Rijiju ten times", he claimed.
"We are continuously contacting the Central Government. We spoke to Kiren Rijiju earlier this month and he assured us that talks would start after August 15, but nothing has started yet. We are mainstream people. How can they neglect us so muchIJ" the ABSU leader asked.
As the three groups are left with "no option", they would relaunch their "democratic non-violent movement", he said and invited all Bodo groups across Assam to join it.
Boro said four rounds of talks had taken place under the erstwhile UPA Government at the Centre although there were no policy guidelines during the discussions on the statehood demand.
"Now we feel that the last few months of Congress were better than the BJP rule. They (Congress) held four rounds of tripartite talks in four months. In 2014 lok Sabha polls we should have supported the Congress," he said.
Boro also said, “The real issues are lack of education, poverty and unemployment. The youths in Bodoland (four districts of BTAD) have no option but to join insurgent outfits due to poverty. They have no good education and there is no employment. So they are bound to join these militant outfits after attaining certain age for easy money,” Boro said appealing the Government to look into the matter in a pragmatic way so that the problem can be solved once and for all.
“There has been continued operation in BTAD against the insurgents. lots of money had been spent every year for militarisation to tackle insurgency. However, mere militarisation and use of force would not help solve the problem,” he said adding that the Government should rather focus on furthering the peace talks with the militant outfits like pro-talk faction National Democratic front of Bodoland (NDFB), which came over ground in 2005 to take part in peace talks.
“The success of peace talks with the pro-talk faction of the NDFB would encourage other anti-talk faction of the outfits to shun the path of violence and there will be lasting solution to insurgency in Bodoland,” he said while appealing to the Government to keep open the door for talks with all the militant outfits.
“We do not support violence. ABSU is the first organisation to raise voice against the anti-talk faction of NDFB when they killed innocent Adivasis in 2014. We welcome the ‘zero tolerance’ attitude of the State Government, but this zero tolerance attitude should not be a mere political statement,” he added.
Boro further mentioned that a faction of the NDFB came over ground in 2005 and since then they have been holding peace talks. “Although ten years have passed, the Centre and the State Government are yet to talk on the main agenda of the outfit. The Government has been delaying the talks but this is not going to help,” he said.