The historic Assam Accord signed on the night of 14/15th August 1985 between the All-Assam Student Union (AASU) and the Central Government and announced by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi from the Red fort on the 38th Independence Day has not seen any light even after thirty-eight years of signing of the accord.
The historic accord was signed after a six-year long agitation started by powerful AASU. The usually peaceful agitation had at times became very violent like that of Neille massacre on 18th February 1983 where more than 1700 immigrant Muslims were killed in a single day. Besides as many as 860 Assamese youths were killed due to police firing and other violent activities during the long period of agitation.
The origin of Assam accord can be traced to the publication of draft electoral rolls by the Election Commission of India in 1979 for Mangaldai Lok Sabha constituency. It was found that as many as 45000 illegal migrants from Bangladesh figured in the electoral roll. Thus, the Assam Movement started in 1979 under the leadership of AASU and AAGSP (All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad). In the early phase of the agitation(1979-1985) , all communities irrespective of tribe, caste, religion, language whole heartedly supported the agitation but gradually many such organizations disassociated from the movement terming the agitation as chauvinistic . Subsequently many prominent tribal groups started demanding their own rights. For instance, BTR (Bodoland Territorial Region) was formed in Bodo dominated areas of Lower Assam in 2003. Many other tribes/ sub -tribes demanded either Autonomous Council or ST status.
Politically, the Assam Accord led to the formation of regional political party AGP (Assam Gana Parishad) by the student leaders of the agitation. The newly formed party in the 1985 state assembly election defeated all powerful Congress on the sympathy as well as aspiration of the Assamese community and formed the Government with promise to implement the Assam accord.
It is pertinent to note that during the long-drawn Assam agitation, many Assamese youth who lost faith in the peaceful movement formed an extremist organization named United Liberation Front of Assam ( ULFA) with an aim to liberate Assam from “Colonial rule” . They alleged that the Central Government has systematically exploited the natural resources of the state to include oil, coal, tea, forest products etc. With tacit support from the ruling AGP Government, ULFA had become a dreaded organization . Consequently, President Rule was promulgated in the state . AFSPA was imposed (which still continues in some parts of the state) and the army was called in to restore the situation.
The key elements of the Assam Accord are detection, deletion and deportation of illegal Bangladeshis who infiltrated to Assam after 24 Dec 1971(date of the formation of Bangladesh). Thus, the first step was the detection of illegal Bangladeshis. Large numbers of Foreigners Tribunals were set up to determine the question of nationality of a person staying illegally is “Foreigner” or not. These tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies established as per Foreigners Tribunal Order -1964 and Foreigners Act of 1948. However, Foreigners Tribunal did not have any mechanism for identification or detection of foreigner.
In 1983 the Central Government passed the Illegal Migration Determination Act. It described the procedures to detect illegal immigrants (from Bangladesh) who entered India after 24th March 1971 and expel them from the country. The major hurdle it created was that it placed the onus on the state to prove that the individual detained or arrested was a foreigner. However, in 2005 the Supreme Court in a case “Sarbananda Sonowal Vs the Union of India declared IMDT as unconstitutional.
What is the best way to have a record of citizen of a country? This could be only done by the updating the NRC (National Registrar of Citizen). The first NRC for Assam was prepared in 1951 after the first census of Independent India. But it was not updated. Subsequently the updating of NRC started in 2013 under the monitoring of Supreme Court of India. The process of updating was very tedious and had caused immense suffering to common people who had to move to various government offices with varied documents to prove their citizenship. The final NRC was announced 31 August 2019 which contained 31 million people and left out 1.9 million applicants.
While it was expected that 19 million people will contain mostly illegal Muslims, but it also contained names of large number of Bengali Hindus even some indigenous people. There was strong criticism that the entire process was flawed, and a lot of illegal Muslims managed to get into NRC by procuring fake documents. The NRC process is not yet complete in the sense that all those whose names do not figure in the NRC have not got the “Rejection Slip” citing the reasons for their names not being included.
Meanwhile the Government in anticipation that those whose names do not figure will be detained for subsequent deportation , many detention centres were established in the state. However, to give a human face, the detention centres has been recently redesignated as “transit camp”. Incidentally, Assam accord of 1985 has not spelt out where the illegal migrants will be deported, and Bangladesh insists that there has not been any large-scale migration from that country.
Meanwhile the Central Government in 2019 had brought Citizenship (Amendment Act) which provided pathway to persecuted Indian Citizen of religious minorities from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who have to get Indian Citizenship. The law does not grant such eligibility to Muslims from these countries This is for the first time that the act was overtly used as criteria for Citizenship under Indian law which brought global criticism.
The passing of this act was deeply resented by the Assamese people. All along they have been demanding that a foreigner is a foreigner, no matter which religion he practices. Assam Accord of 1985 talks of deportation of all foreigners irrespective of religion. Fierce protests took place in many parts of the state against CAA leading to killing of a few Assamese youths in police firing. Similarly, Muslims protested in many parts of the country particularly at Shaeen Bagh, area of Delhi.
In the Assam Accord a clause (Clause 6) had been incorporated which talk of giving constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards as may be appropriate to protect , preserve and promote the cultural, linguistic, Social and heritage of Assamese identity.
Now who constitute the Assamese people? The Government had set up a committee under a retired judge to define Assamese people and suggest measures to safeguard their rights. It took the committee quite some time to define which constitute Assamese people. The Committee finally recommended that any citizen or descendants of India residing in Assam on or before January 1951 could be called as indigenous people. However, the report submitted by the Committee has not yet been acted upon by the Central Government.
The Election Commission of India (ECI )on 11th August 2023 has published the final order of newly drawn geographical boundaries of 14 Lok Sabha and 126 Assembly seats. While the seats have remained unchanged however the number of SC (Scheduled Caste) have been increased by one and that of ST(Scheduled Tribe) by 3 at the cost of minority seats. The Assam CM has all along been maintaining that “ While the Assam Accord and the NRC has failed to meet the demand of the indigenous people, delimitation of constituency will safeguard the Assamese society”.
Thus, the Assam accord continues to be in limbo. Meanwhile the Supreme Court is in the process of hearing case filed by some organizations demanding 1951 as cutoff date for identification of foreigners. These organisations argue that there cannot be two cut off years, one for Assam (1971 as Cut off Year) and another for rest if the Country (1951). If the Supreme Court passes judgment favorably for 1951 as cut off year, the Assam Accord will become null and void.
To conclude, the historic Assam Accord for which the Assamese sacrificed greatly is caught up in judicial process as well as bureaucratic tangle. Today only a fraction of people in the state of Assam talks of the accord and most feel that it has already met it’s Natural Death or would meet very soon.
