Guwahati: Senior attorney Upamanyu Hazarika claimed on January 22 that Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had expressed two sets of conflicting opinions on January 21 regarding the validity of the Assam Accord cutoff date of 25 March 1971 and the issue of the cutoff date for the grant of citizenship to migrants from Bangladesh, both of which will be heard by the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on February 14, 2023.
He stated that the Chief Minister claimed that the year must be 1971 because the then-Assam government signed the Accord. However, he does support 1951 along with CAA and delimitation.
“This is nothing but an attempt at confusing the indigenous people by indulging in doublespeak. The fact is that there’s today only an affidavit of the state government supporting 1971 as the cutoff date,” Upamanyu Hazarika said.
“The sanctity which he assigns to the Assam Accord cutoff date is contradicted by his own government policy under Mission Basundhara 2.0 under which by notification of 11 November 2022, Bangladeshis coming into Assam prior to 2011 are being allotted land in 14 lakh bighas of Grazing reserves. He has modified the cutoff date to 2011,” Hazarika further added.
“When the IMDT Act was under challenge before the Supreme Court, the then NDA government at the Centre and AGP government in the state had supported the repeal of the IMDT Act. After the Congress came to power in the state they’d changed the state government affidavit to support the IMDT Act, Himanta Biswa Sarma was a part of that government,” he said.
According to Upamanyu Hazarika, the state government’s affidavit currently on file with the Supreme Court was submitted in 1971, when Shri Biswa Sarma served as the prior Congress-backed government’s minister responsible for implementing the Assam Accord. Shri Sarma has since joined the BJP and converted to Hinduism, but the affidavit is still in effect despite his professed support for 1951 as the cutoff year.
“Even now there’s time to file a new affidavit against 1971 being the cutoff date, if his intentions are honest,” he said.
“What he has voiced on Janaury 21 before the press and the people of Assam can be filed in an affidavit before the Supreme Court.Regardless of what he says, Shri Biswa Sarma’s actions have always been consistently in favour of Bangladeshis and he makes these confusing statements only to beguile the public.”, the Senior Advocate added.