Guwahati, January 01: A survey conducted by kins of ULFA members showed 95 per cent of people in nine districts of Assam had rejected the demand for sovereignty for the state, but the banned group dismissed the finding even as its cadres gunned down nine persons in stepped up violence today.

The "referendum" conducted in nine of the State's 27 districts by Assam Public Works (APW), a body formed by relatives of ULFA cadres, revealed that over 95 per cent of respondents were not in favour of the group's demand for sovereignty.

Releasing the findings at a meeting here today, APW's secretary general Abhijeet Sarma said only about five per cent of people surveyed supported the demand.

But ULFA chairman Arabindo Rajkhowa rejected the survey, and described the APW as a body "comprising agents of RAW and IB (that) functioned at the behest of the Indian machinery." ULFA cadres also stepped up violence, carrying out attacks in four places in Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts that left at least nine persons, most of them non-Assamese, dead and six others injured.

The militants first struck at a place under Joypur Police Station in Dibrugarh district, killing four workers of a brick kiln and injuring four others.

The kiln is owned by surrendered ULFA member Utbal Barua.

The rebels shot dead five persons and injured two in Doomdooma township.

They also opened fire at Tingrai in Dibrugarh district and Bandarghati in Doomdooma, but there were no casualties at these places.

ULFA's insistence on making sovereignty the core issue for any talks with the Government is one of the reasons that has stalled the peace process in Assam.

The Centre has already rejected the demand.

APW secretary general Sarma said the survey was conducted in the districts of Bongaigaon, Goalpara, Guwahati (metro), Dhubri, Darrang, Sonitpur, Lakhimpur, Dhemaji and Nalbari during the first phase.

Other districts will be covered in the second phase to be launched soon.

More than 1,800 members of APW fanned out across the nine districts with questionnaires that were distributed for people to give their views.

Sarma said the response against sovereignty was overwhelming, with people rejecting it at the first look.

"This only indicates that the ULFA has failed to convince people about its ideologies," he said.

ULFA chairman Rajkhowa, however, told media on phone here this evening that neither the APW nor the government had any right to conduct a survey and that a competent and impartial international body alone could carry out such an exercise.

Panic prevailed in Doomdooma after the attacks by the ULFA, and shopkeepers downed shutters but security measures were promptly put in place, Tinsukia's Additional Superintendent of Police Amitav Sinha said.

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