The death toll in the recent violence in Assam’s three districts has reached 81 with recovery of many bodies, however, three people are still reportedly missing from the violence-affected areas of the Sonitpur district.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said this on Saturday even as he added that the situation is returning to normalcy in the affected areas of the three districts-Kokrajhar, Sonitpur and in Chirang districts and also in neighbouring Udalguri district, which had witnessed the backlash of the recent violence. “While the death toll has reached 81 so far, three people are still missing in the affected areas,” Gogoi said adding that there has, however, been no incident of fresh violence since last several days.
“People are returning to their houses from the relief camps and we have set-up security pickets in all the violence affected areas of the three districts and also in Udalguri district, where backlash led to displacement of people and burning of houses,” said Gogoi. “Earlier, there were 2.90 lakh displaced people in 136 relief camps. Now, we have only 2.08 lakh inmates in 118 relief camps till Friday,” he said. The Chief Minister said that the Assam Government had already handed over four cases to the National Investigating Agency (NIA) and added that the Central agency had already started investigation of the violence.
The Assam Government had already registered 102 cases regarding the violence in the four districts and hinted that more cases will be handed over to the Central investigating agency later. He said that the Assam police had so far arrested 58 persons for their involvement in the violence and that some more had been identified. Meanwhile, the Chief Minister slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA Government at the Centre for changing the Planning Commission to Niti Aayog and said changing of the name is a mere political gimmick.
“The Planning Commission had contributed towards the development of India since its inception. Now, they (BJP) do not talk of ‘achchey din’ that brought them to power,” said Gogoi while adding that the Centre had also not consulted with the States in changing the plan panel to Niti Aayog. “The Prime Minister had on August 15 announced that he would change the Planning Commission. It is only in the last month that the Prime Minister had spoken to the Chief Ministers of the country. So his decision to change the Planning Commission is not in consultation with the State Governments”, he said pointing out that while the Prime Minister talks of cooperative federalism he does not follow it in reality.