While secessionist demands and threat to ‘cut off’ Assam and the North East were heard from the Shaheen Bagh protests recently, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has signed a peace accord with the Bodo groups of Assam.
Home Minister Amit Shah: Today Centre, Assam Govt and Bodo representatives have signed an important agreement. This agreement will ensure a golden future for Assam and for the Bodo people. https://t.co/tnxf8Y21Nb pic.twitter.com/hD9VaTL5f3
— ANI (@ANI) January 27, 2020
The Government of India today signed a tripartite agreement with representatives of all factions of banned organisation National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) at Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The Bodo students group All Bodo Students’ Union was also a signatory of the peace accord.
Addressing the media on the occasion, Union Home Minister Amit Shah assured that the agreement signed between Assam government, Centre and the Bodo representatives will herald a golded future for Assam and the Bodo people. The peace accord ensures political and economic benefits for the Bodo people, without compromising the territorial integrity of the Assam state.
This will be the third peace accord to be signed in the last 27 years since the violent movement for a separate Bodoland state began. The violent movement has claimed thousands of lives and destruction worth several crores.
Yesterday, the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) Chief Hagrama Mohilary, in his speech on the occasion of Republic day celebration in Kokrajhar, welcomed the decision of the central government to schedule Bodo accord with NDFB and ABSU on Monday. He expressed his hope that the accord will bring peace and development in the region.
The convener of the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), and Assam’s Finance and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had asserted that no new village or area would be added to the BTAD under the new agreement. Allaying the concerns of Bodo representatives, Sarma had said on Saturday in Guwahati that as per the new accord, the Centre would not upgrade the state’s ‘Bodoland Territorial Area Districts’ (BTAD) to a Union Territory.
The peace agreement was signed amidst the calls to severe Assam and the North-East from the rest of the country, made by the Shaheen Bagh mastermind and the Wire columnist, Sharjeel Imam. Earlier last week, a video had gone viral in which one of the co-organisers of the Shaheen Bagh protest, Sharjeel Imam was seen making profoundly seditious comments on the territorial integrity of the country. Amidst theological chants of “Allah-u-Akbar” and “Naara-e-Taqbeer”, Sharjeel urged Muslims to organise themselves to cut-off Assam and North-East from the rest of India.
