Assam Chief Minister on Saturday directed the state chief secretary to immediately visit Silchar and all the districts following a discussion with a delegation of North East Linguistic & Ethnic Coordination Committee. The NELECC delegation submitted a memorandum to the chief minister demanding government’s intervention to ensure that linguistic minorities are not further ‘harassed, intimidated, and coerced under the pretext of NRC update.’
In its memorandum, the NELECC said, “A huge number of genuine and bona fide Indian citizens who hail from different states of our beloved Nation and even the names of a large section of various tribes of Assam including that of many tea-garden workers who have settled in Assam since British rule have been left out.”
“The fact that Mr Prateek Hajela has been issuing fresh notifications every now and then, has put the concerned people in a quandary,” the memorandum said.
The delegation urged the government to immediately intervene to assuage the fears of linguistic minorities of the state.
Members of the delegation also highlighted several examples of discrepancies in the final draft NRC where genuine Indians have been left out.
The delegation included Ashit Dutta, Shubrangshu Sekhar Bhattacharjee, Asish Haldar, Rabijit Chakraborty, Santanu Naik, Manna Bhattacharjee, Dharmananda Deb, Subash Das, Joydeep Dutta and Professor Abhijit Nath.
Forest minister Parimal Suklabaidya, chief secretary Alok Kumar, Principal Secretary, Home and Political Affairs LS Changsan and state BJP president Ranjeet Dass were also present during the meeting.
It was also decided in the meeting that the VDP state conference will be held next year at Silchar with chief minister as the chief guest.