The party campaign in Northeast will focus on the infiltration from the neighbouring Bangladesh, the increasing terror menace and its impact on the society, and the development of the alienated region-Nava Thakuria
As the election waves gain momentum throughout India, Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) suddenly emerges as an important entity (rival) for the ruling Congress coalition government in Assam. Soon after the regional political party of the State had tied an electoral alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress leaders including the State chief minister Tarun Gogoi started making too noisy and callous comments against the leaders of the party.
If an influential minister of the Gogois cabinet, Himanta Bishwa Sarma condemned the understanding between AGP and BJP as a shame for the regional politics, the other minister Pradyut Bordoloi termed it an unsuccessful relationship. Even the Assam Pradesh Congress chief Bhubaneswar Kalita forecast their (AGP-BJP) failure in the forthcoming general election and the chief minister came out with statements that the AGP had damaged the future of regional politics (making relationship with the communal BJP) in this part of the country.
Assam goes to polls on April 16 & 23, as the country embraces five-phased Lok Sabha election (between April 16 and May 13). There were some initial resentments among the political parties and general people for the first date, as it coincides with the Bohag or Rongali Bihu, but slowly it got diminished. The revised electoral rolls by the Election Commission of India dentify 17,468, 958 voters eligible (in Assam) for exercising their franchises to form the 15th Lok Sabha (the lower house of Indian Parliament).
It may be mentioned that the main opposition party of Assam, the AGP had finalized a pre-poll alliance with BJP leadership for the Lok Sabha polls in the first week of March. The deal was finalized in New Delhi in presence of the BJP president Rajnath Singh, their prime ministerial candidate LK Advani, the AGP president Chandra Mohan Patowary and its working president Phani Bhushan Choudhury.
Commenting on the alliance, Advani said it would not only affect the electoral scenario of Assam, but of the entire Northeast (total 24 Lok Sabha constituencies). He also termed the AGP as a party being born out of a nationalist movement and also gained experience of ruling twice in the State.
The regional party, which was given birth after the end of historic Assam agitation by All Assam Students Union, came to power two times (1985 to 1989 and 1996 to 2001) at Dispur. However they could not perform to fulfill the expectations of the mainstream Assamese and later faced the splitting and defeat against the Congress.
The first split occurred in March 1991, when Bhrigu Kumar Phukan, Pulakesh Barua, Dinesh Goswami with many others formed Natun Asom Gana Parishad. Later they returned back to the party in 1992. Then Atul Bora formed Trinamool Gana Parishad in 2000 and finally Prafulla Kumar Mahanta constitutes his party, Asom Gana Parishad (Progressive) in 2005. Finally all the breakaway groups came together in October 2008.
The responsibility to lead the new look AGP was put on Patowary. The AGP had already announced the list of six its candidates for the general election. The list includes the sitting MPs Sarbananda Sonowal (Dibrugarh parliamentary constituency) and Arun Kumar Sarma (Lakhimpur) with the tea tribe leader Joseph Toppo (Tezpur), Bhupen Rai (Barpeta), Sabda Rabha (Kokrajhar) and the former State minister Gunin Hazarika (Koliabor).
The BJP is supposed to field their candidates in the rest of eight constituencies including the prestigious Guwahati seat, which was won by the Congress in 2004 general election. The party, which decides to go to polls this time with the slogan Mazbut Neta Aur Nirnayak Sarkar (strong leader and decisive government), has also decided to contest for two seats in Tripura, two in Arunachal Pradesh and one in Manipur. The party campaign in Northeast will focus on the infiltration from the neighbouring Bangladesh, the increasing terror menace and its impact on the society, and the development of the alienated region, informed the Assam BJP chief Ramen Deka.
| Memory of botched PC Ram operation prompts policeman to allow kidnappers to flee | |
| PULLOCK DUTTA | |
Guwahati, March 6 : A few bitter lessons learnt from the failed P.C. Ram rescue mission prompted the police chief of Udalguri to let the abductors of a tea manager’s sons flee last night, for what seemed a small barter for the children’s safety. A.K. Tiwari, the Udalguri superintendent of police, who was part of the team that rescued the two sons of Monmohinipur tea estate manger Pamminder Sehra last night, had also led the operation to rescue Ram. An executive of the Food Corporation of India, Ram was abducted by Ulfa militants and killed during an encounter between the rebels and a police team that had set out to rescue him. Tiwari was not ready for a re-run of the Ram fiasco this time, even if it meant letting the kidnappers flee for the time being. He told The Telegraph today that the kidnappers were cornered by the police, along with other security agencies, during door-to-door search operations last night. “At this juncture, they (the kidnappers) got in touch with one of our sources and informed him that they would kill the two kids if the security forces continued the search operation. We had no option and asked our sources to tell the kidnappers to set the kids free and we would allow them to escape,” he said. “We had a bad experience in the P.C. Ram episode, when he died, and so wanted no harm to the children,” he said. Police later apprehended two persons suspected to be involved in the kidnapping and were hopeful of arresting the rest. Tiwari said the five-member gang of kidnappers has been identified and would be apprehended soon. Udalguri police, Tiwari said, were alerted within an hour of the abduction. The kidnappers had waylaid the boys’ vehicle when they were on their way to school around 6.30am on Tuesday and forced the driver to take them to Dhansiri river bridge at Rowta in Udalguri. “We were also informed that the kidnappers had called the manager and informed that the kids were safe and they would call later. From this phone call we traced them to a particular location under Rowta police station,” the police official said. “Since it was a large area (spread over nine villages) and there were several entry and exit routes, we had to seek help from the army, BSF, Assam Rifles and CRPF for the search operation,” he said. As the search intensified, the kidnappers called with the bargain. After the policemen accepted the offer, the kidnappers called again and said the children would be left in a particular house in Jhargaon village. “We wanted the children safe and secure and asked the source to inform the kidnappers that they were free to go. We, in fact spotted three kidnappers escaping through a drain but did not shoot because we feared that the two other kidnappers might harm the kids on hearing gunshots,” the official said. The two boys, Barun and Karan, were handed over to their parents last night. |
Guwahati, March 6 : The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre has barred a seller from operating in the auction for one year and also fined him Rs 1 lakh for his involvement in the recent scam at the centre.
At a high-level meeting held last night, the tea auction centre also decided to bar a warehouse from operation for six months and fined it Rs 50,000.
Assam chief secretary P.C. Sharma, who is also the chairman of the GTAC, chaired the meeting.
The centre also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on a tea brokerage firm.
The scam was detected on February 18 when a few buyers came calling with delivery orders to collect the tea they had purchased during the auction the previous day.
It was detected that there was no tea available in the warehouses. Mismatches between the quality of the samples put up at the auctions and the actual tea sold thereafter, which was inferior, also came to light.
The GTAC subsequently formed a special investigation committee to probe into the scam and action was taken on the basis of the findings of the committee.
Sources in the GTAC said it was agreed upon at last night’s meeting that some exemplary punishment should be meted out to all the parties involved in the scam, in order to restore the confidence in the auction centre. The scam had rattled the tea industry of Assam, forcing Dispur to call for the emergency meeting last night.
“If no action was taken against the guilty parties involved in the scam, buyers as well as sellers would have found more reason to avoid auctioning at the GTAC,” an official said.
There were also reports of sellers in Assam avoiding the GTAC and opting for the Calcutta Tea Auction Centre.
Sources said the chief secretary, in yesterday’s meeting, cautioned the GTAC authorities to be careful so that no such misdeeds could not be carried out in the future.
The special investigation committee report said though it has come to light that fraudulent activities at the GTAC have been going on since December last year, there was a possibility that such wrongdoings may have taken place on earlier occasions also.
New Delhi, March 5 : State-run major Oil and Natural Gas Corp Thursday said it will invest Rs.24.65 billion (Rs.2,465 crore) for revamping oil fields in Assam.
The board of the upstream major approved the investment for the first phase of renewal of the Lakwa and Lakhmani surface facilities in the northeastern state, a company statement said.
The project will allow the company to continue its operations in the field for another 25 years. Other ONGC assets in Assam will also be revamped in a phased manner. Besides, the ONGC board also approved $206 million for two different development projects in the western offshore field of Panna and Mukta.
ONGC has set up a joint venture with Reliance Industries Ltd and British Gas India to develop the Panna-Mukta fields.
The board was also notified of five new discoveries, including a significant find in Tripura.
| Hailakandi | ||
March 5 : Knowledge and technology will be the new scythe and spade for Hailakandi farmers as the district readies to be the next agriculture research destination of the state. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research, under the Union agriculture ministry, has just given its nod to set up the first agriculture research centre at Hailakandi to conduct extensive studies on crop production in low-lying, flood-prone zones. Though the Regional Agriculture Research Station near Karimganj and the Agriculture University in Jorhat have long been researching on hybrid deeds and farming methods, the new centre is expected to take experimental studies a step further. The idea of setting up the agriculture research centre was first mooted by minister Pramila Rani Brahma to the Centre in 2006. Delhi granted the outlay of the project after being assured land acquisition would not be a hindrance. The state government immediately began scouting for a plot for the research centre, which is likely to cost Rs 24 crore. The district administration, in fact, has arranged for 15 hectares in Serispore tea garden near the district headquarters town of Hailakandi. Eager to ensure a smooth transfer of land to the Union agriculture ministry, the administration has shifted 15 peasant families — all of them illegal settlers — with the promise of building houses for them under the Indira Awas Yojana. Since rice is the staple food of the Northeast, most of the research will be on paddy. Over 40 rice varieties had already been evolved separately by the both Assam Agriculture University and the Regional Agricultural Research Station. These have been grown on farmlands and tested for resistance to diseases and pests. The new research centre will be expected add to the hybrid varieties and farming techniques. |
Guwahati, March 3 : Stung by the intensified counter-insurgency operations, Ulfa has hatched a plot to identify and neutralise civilians whom it suspects to be informers of security forces.
Police stumbled on the outfit’s intention during the interrogation of Ulfa militant Madhusudan Das, who was arrested here on Saturday.
A source in the city police said the commander of Ulfa’s 709 battalion, Hira Sarania, had constituted five to six small groups, each comprising four to five cadres, trained in intelligence-gathering skills and use of arms, in a bid to pinpoint the civilian informers and neutralise them.
According to intelligence inputs, Sarania — who figures in the most-wanted list of Assam police — is also supervising the activities of Ulfa’s 109 battalion.
“Das has told his interrogators that these groups, which were led by leaders of the ranks of self-styled corporals, were hiding at different places in lower Assam such as Baksa, Nalbari, Barpeta, Kamrup, Goalpara and Bongaigaon districts,” the source said.
“These units were specifically asked to identify the civilians, who were being used by the police and army as spies to gather information on the activities of Ulfa in lower Assam where the 709 and 109 battalions of the outfit are operating. The members of these groups were drawn from these two battalions only,” the police source, quoting the confessional statement of Das, said.
He said Das was aware of the constitution of one such group, which is led by “corporal” Kamal Barman alias Nakul Kalita besides hardcore rebels like Baba Rabha, Amal Kalita, Gautam Medhi and Dhoba as its members.
“We have not been able ascertain the real name of Dhoba, which is actually his nickname. But the remaining members of the group are in our list of wanted Ulfa cadres,” the source said.
“According to Das, these groups were constituted around six months ago but he doesn’t know much about the members of the other groups except one. We are hopeful that sustained interrogation of the accused may shed more light,” he added.
Das was remanded in five days’ police custody by the court, after his arrest.
The police source said the group with which Das was in touch is at present hiding somewhere in Baksa.
“According to our information these groups are waiting for an opportune time to attack those whom they suspect to be police or army informers. The matter is of serious concern as they may create trouble ahead of the next Lok Sabha polls when the attention of the security forces will divert towards election-related security duties,” the source said.
He said the possibility of these groups targeting persons, whom they believe are “poaching” the cadres of the outfit’s 709 and 109 battalions and trying to persuade them to either surrender or declare unilateral ceasefire cannot be ruled out.
The police said Das, who belongs to Musalpur in Baksa district, joined Ulfa in 2007.
In another development, police today arrested Naba Kumar Rai, a cadre of Ulfa’s 709 battalion from Gorchuk area here.
A police source said that he was arrested on the basis of Das’s confession.
Silchar, March 3: The Union ministry of road transport and shipping has sanctioned a Rs 91.50-crore scheme to upgrade a 129-km stretch of the Barak, the second longest river in the Northeast, to national waterway.
A bill to upgrade the stretch of the Barak between Lakhipur (a sub-divisional town in Cachar district) and Bhanga (in Karimganj district), via the Cachar district headquarters of Silchar, to NW6 was passed in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
According to the Central Inland Waterways Transport Corporation (CIWTC) officials here, 2011-12 has been fixed as the deadline to upgrade the new waterway.
The waterway will facilitate transport of goods and passengers in the remote Barak valley districts and also help to link the valley with Myanmar and Bangladesh.
The scheme includes, among others, the setting up of at least four terminal stations for loading and unloading goods and passengers on the Barak waterways. The stations are Lakhipur, Silchar, Badarpur and Bhanga.
Congress MP and the Union minister from Cachar, Sontosh Mohan Dev, had been waging a relentless move to upgrade the river into a national waterway over the past few years.
Better navigation and dredging will be part of the scheme, as the river is now congested with mud, slush and garbage.
The Barak springs from a stream on Saramati hills on the Nagaland-Manipur border and flows through Manipur and south Assam to merge with the Surma. Thereafter, it enters Bangladesh, before emptying out into the Bay of Bengal.
Cargo vessels having an average weight of 10 tonnes can ply through this national waterway at a cheaper cost than those ferried by the Railways and road transport, the CIWTC officials said.
Besides, the annual floods in the Barak valley districts would be considerably minimised once ships start plying on the Barak, they added.
Guwahati, March 3 : Dispur has convened a meeting on March 4 to discuss the developments arising out of the scam in the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre.
Chief secretary P.C. Sarma, who is also the chairman of the GTAC, would discuss the findings of the special investigation committee, which was formed to probe into the scam.
The committee has already submitted its report to the GTAC authorities.
Sources in the GTAC said two warehouses have been “disqualified” on the basis of the findings of the committee and the tea consignments in these warehouses have been shifted to other warehouses.
The sources said the axe might also fall on a seller and a brokerage firm, found involved in the scam.
However, a final decision in this regard would be taken in the meeting on Wednesday.
However, a final decision in this regard would be taken in the meeting on Wednesday.
Industry sources said the Tea Board of India, which is the licensing authority of the GTAC, has also taken up the matter very seriously and is likely to conduct an independent inquiry into the scam.
The scam was detected on February 18 when a few buyers came calling with delivery orders to collect the tea they had purchased during the auction the previous day. It was detected that there was no tea available in the warehouses. Mismatches between the quality of the samples put up at the auctions and the actual tea sold thereafter, which was inferior, also came to light.
The sources in the GTAC said the owner of a particular warehouse has admitted to his involvement in the scam and had also said “it had been continuing since sale number 1 in December last year”.
On the basis of his admission, the warehouse has been disqualified.
In another development, the investigation committee, discovered that a particular seller, suspected to be the kingpin, had been buying back his own teas through a series of buyers, in order to establish a high price of his teas in the GTAC.
“He along with the help of the warehouses, sent false arrival weighment reports and managed the bank finance through brokers for non-existent teas,” the probe report said.
Guwahati, Mar 3 : The officials of the Assam Handball Association (AHA) sounded optimistic that the State team will perform well in the forthcoming East Zone Handball Championship which will get under way in Guwahati from March 9. The Assam Handball Association (AHA) would host the event.
Talking to a mediapersons, the president of the AHA Kalyan Gogoi said that the men’s team of Asom, who were runners-up in the earlier edition of this championship, performed well in the recently concluded senior national handball championship. This performance will definitely boost the morale of the team. “On the other hand, the women’s team will go into the competition as the defending champion and I am optimistic that they would be able to perform will come out with shinning results,” said Gogoi.
The media briefing was also attended by the chairperson of the organizing committee Rani Narah and secretary Munin Nobis. Elaborating on the preparation of the tournament, Narah said that it everything is going according to schedule. The total budget of the competition will be around Rs 9.8 lakh. The preliminary matches of the championship will be held at the Nehru Stadium while the Deshbhakta Tarun Ram Phookan Indoor Stadium will be the venue for the semi final and final matches.
The secretary of the AHA Gautam Choudhury, who was also present in the media briefing, added that altogether eight teams will take part in the championship and they are: Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura and Asom.
| People hit Sonari streets to protest killing of elephant | ||
Dibrugarh, Feb 28 : Animal lovers and activists today took to the streets of Sonari in Sivasagar and burnt effigies of forest minister Rockybul Hussain to protest the brutal killing of a pregnant elephant near Abhayapur reserve forest on Wednesday night. Villagers living on the edge of Abhayapur reserve forest found the carcass of the elephant yesterday, with its tail, tip of the trunk and an ear chopped off. Led by the Assam Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chatra Parishad (AJYCP), nearly a hundred people shouted slogans against the Tarun Gogoi-led government for failing to protect animals. They accused the government of failing to control, “poaching and timber smuggling” in the reserve forest which shares a 20-km boundary with Nagaland. “We have been highlighting these issues for quite some time now through various memorandums and applications, but the authorities so far have preferred to keep mum,” said Rabijit Baruah, the president of the Sonari regional unit of the AJYCP. The forest department, however, was still not sure who killed the elephant. “If it had been a case of poaching, the poachers would have targeted a tusker in the herd. However, that was not the case. This is why we think that the elephant was not killed by poachers but by some local groups. The investigations have just begun and we will be able to come to a conclusion once the probe is over,” Utpal Bora, the divisional forest officer of Sivasagar, said over telephone. Bora, who visited the area yesterday, said samples of the animal’s kidney, liver have been sent for forensic tests at the Guwahati-based Forensic Science Laboratory and the report is expected within a week’s time. “First and foremost, we will have to establish the cause of death. If we find that it was because of poisoning, we have certain people on our list of suspects. We will begin questioning them,” Bora said. Green groups have also come down heavily on the state government for its failure to protect the state’s greenery and wildlife. “It is a matter of shame for the state government and the forest department that poaching and timber smuggling continue despite a series of agitation by various organisations. The forest department has hopelessly failed to protect the state’s wildlife,” Soumyadeep Datta, the director of Nature’s Beckon, said. Datta also demanded an impartial inquiry to probe the elephant killing. |
| Mismatch in samples quality detected | ||
Guwahati, Feb 28 : The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) has set up a special investigation committee to probe allegations of foul play in connection with auctioning of tea. Sources in the industry said the probe was ordered after it came to light that there were mismatches between the quality of samples put up at the auctions and the actual tea sold thereafter, which was inferior. Besides, there were reports of a seller procuring bank loans against non-existent tea in connivance with brokers and warehouses. The irregularities came to the fore when a few buyers, armed with delivery orders, demanded that the tea they had purchased at sale number 7 on February 17 be handed over to them, but it was subsequently found that no tea was available in the warehouses. Sources in the GTAC said the Arrival Weighment Report (AWR) of tea for sale numbers 7 and 8 had been given by two warehouses and the sampling and valuation of the tea had also been done, while there was actually no tea available in the warehouses. According to rules, a seller has to procure an AWR from a warehouse and clearance from brokers on the arrival of tea to the warehouse, on the basis of which he (the seller) can procure bank finance. However, the particular seller, in connivance with the warehouse owners and brokers, allegedly procured false AWRs and on the basis of these, bank loans. “He procured loans from the bank although there was no tea at the warehouses,” a source said. The sources said on procuring bank finance, the seller purchased cheaper tea from the market and delivered these to the buyers, sometimes even weeks later after the delivery order was placed to the warehouses by the latter. “This particular seller put superior quality tea samples for sale at the auction and delivered inferior quality tea when the sale was completed. As soon as he gets an order, he purchases tea from the market with money from bank finance and supplies the same to the buyers,” the source said. However, things came to light when there was shortage of tea in the market this off-season. “Although he got the order, he had no tea to supply. This came to light when the buyers came calling with the delivery orders at the warehouse,” the source added. This is the first time that such irregularities have come to light at the GTAC. This could further tarnish the image of Assam tea among buyers besides keeping them away from the auctions at the GTAC, which already suffers from a paucity of buyers. GTAC secretary Jayanta Kakoti admitted that there had been irregularities and confirmed that an inquiry had been ordered. A former chairman of the Assam Tea Planters Association, Raj Baruah, said this kind of “foul play” would only keep buyers away from the Guwahati auction centre. “Who would take such risk and that, too, when teas are available at the Calcutta auction centre?” he asked. He said the Assam Tea Planters Association was awaiting the committee’s report into the misconduct at the GTAC. “We will take up the matter strongly if irregularities are proved,” he added. |
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Silchar, Feb 28 : The declaration of a lockout at Urrunabund tea estate yesterday, the second lockout in a plantation in the Cachar tea region in a month, has unnerved the planters in south Assam at a time when the output is surging and the average price of the CTC yield per kg is on an upswing.
The estate, owned by the Calcutta-based Jatinga Tea Ltd, is on the highway that links Silchar town with the airport.
A showdown between tea workers and the management at Aylabari tea estate under Karimganj district early February led to a lockout, which was, however, lifted after a week.
The assistant labour commissioner’s office in this town has convened a meeting between the management of Urrunabund tea estate and the two labour unions early next week to sort out the tangle leading to the lockout in the garden.
Urrunabund is one of the oldest and biggest tea plantations in tea-growing Cachar with about 500 labourers on the payroll and producing about 4.5 lakh kg of CTC tea. Its gross area is over a thousand hectares of land.
Trouble began this week when a few labourers had a spat with the management.
One of the labourers, Pintoo Baidya, even assaulted the general manager of the garden, R.N. Pandey, forcing him and his managerial colleagues to leave the garden and take shelter in Silchar.
A section of the workers, owing allegiance to the BJP-controlled Barak Valley Cha Mazdoor Sangha, were irked after Jatinga Tea Ltd ordered a survey of the lands to find out how many of the workers and the outsiders were illegal occupants and how much land could be farmed out to these people.
The labourers had also been venting their ire as the management appeared to be firm on evicting illegal settlers in the 30 acres of land of Urrunabund which Jatinga Tea donated to a religious trust in south India to build a 400-bed modern hospital there.
The Cachar Cha Sramik Union, affiliated to Intuc, has taken an initiative to defuse tension in the garden. Its assistant general secretary, D.N. Baroi, today said the management should refrain from taking any anti-worker stand.
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