Reacting to Army Chief General Bipin Rawat statement that a planned immigration to Northeast is taking place because of the western neighbour, former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Friday said his party has taken the statement very seriously.
“We are taking Army Chief’s statement very seriously because since independence, no Army Chief has made such a statement. We know there is problem of influx in Assam. But during the present government’s rule, this problem has increased to such an extent that even the Army Chief has been compelled to give statement on this,” Gogoi told reporters here.
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Gogoi said that during his government’s tenure, Army never spoke about this issue.
The Army Chief in a seminar recently had said, “A planned immigration is taking place because of our western neighbour. They will always try and ensure that this area is taken over, playing the proxy dimension of warfare.”
“There is a party called AIUDF. If you look at it, they have grown in a faster time-frame than the BJP grew over the years,” he had said, adding that the BJP won only two seats in the 1984 national election. “The AIUDF is moving at a faster pace in Assam.”
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“I was the Chief Minister for the first two years after BJP government came to power at the centre. When there is such a serious threat, Home Ministry should have informed me,” he said.
He said that Army Chief should be apolitical and questioned the basis of Rawat’s remark that AIUDF is growing faster than BJP in Assam.
In his trademark style, he also said that BJP and AIUDF are two sides of the same coin.
“I will say that Badruddin Ajmal is our main enemy. Both BJP and AIUDF have the same agenda. Both these parties are communal. In fact, BJP wants AIUDF to garner all the minority votes. Ajmal is the reason why BJP is in power in the state right now,” he said.