BJP's Delhi vision document calls NE people 'immigrants'
Source: Hueiyen News Service / Agencies
New Delhi, February 03 2015:
BJP released its vision document for the Delhi Assembly elections on Tuesday, promising to make the city world class.
The vision, which boasts of the Narendra Modi government's achievements in the last seven months at the Centre, however, seems to have been written in a hurry.
The document calls the people from India's Northeast "immigrants" .
One of the titles of the Vision Document says Northeast Immigrants to be Protected and the text under this reads, "Special cells in all police stations and special 24-hour helpline numbers to be set up for the protection of the Northeastern migrants.
To safeguard the Students of NE origin, special guardianship will be arranged with local families for them." Delhi has seen a spate of racial attacks targeted against the people from the Northeast.
In one incident last year, a student Nido Taniam died after he was badly beaten by shopkeepers at a market in central Delhi.
Taniam's death brought to fore the discrimination people from that part of the country face in a cosmopolitan city like Delhi.
The Congress was quick to react.
Addressing a press conference, Congress leader Ajay Maken asked, "Is BJP trying to say the people from the Northeast are not Indian citizens?" He also demanded that the BJP remove this line from its vision document.
Northeast demands unconditional apology .
Within hours of the BJP releasing its Vision document for the Delhi Assembly elections in which the ruling party referred to people from the Northeastern region as "immigrants", the entire region is up in arms against it, with various organizations condemning the saffron party and demanding an unconditional apology from it.
"We have been fighting against the onslaught of immigrants for the past 35 years, and here is a political party � and that too the ruling party � which has termed the people of the Northeast as immigrants.
How can we tolerate this? This is nothing but blatant insult to the Northeast.
The BJP must tender an unconditional apology and it should come from the top, from the prime minister's level," said All Assam Students' Union (AASU) advisor Samujjal Bhattacharjya.
He is also advisor to the North-East Students' Organisation (NESO) .
In Shillong, NESO president Samuel Jyrwa too echoed the same sentiment.
"When they wanted votes for Lok Sabha they made tall promises of throwing out the immigrants from Northeast.
Now they have called us immigrants.
This can't be simply tolerated," Jyrwa said.
Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) president Atul Bora said such a statement coming from the ruling party at the Centre will only further alienate the region.
"Our stand that everybody in Delhi has the same perception about the Northeast has been vindicated.
We have been telling from day one that there is no difference between the Congress and BJP.
The damage done is irreparable," Bora said.
Assam state AAP leader Manoram Gogoi recalled Prime Minister Narendra Modi describing the eight Northeastern states as "asta-lakshmi" (eight goddesses of wealth) during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
"The same party that had described the region as asta-lakshmi has now called us immigrants.
This is terrible," Gogoi said.
Protests have been raised across the region, from Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh to Kohima in Nagaland to Aizawl in Mizoram and Agartala in Tripura.
"We vehemently condemn the BJP for making such a gross irresponsible statement.
This has hurt all of us, and proved that the promise for bringing about a law to protect people of the Northeast in other parts of the country was only crocodile's tears," said Asom Jatiyabadi Yuva-Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) president Manoj Barua.
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