Amit Shah promises ‘infiltrator-free’ Assam at rally

Guwahati: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah here on Thursday said that the saffron party would identify every single Bangladeshi infiltrator in Assam after returning to power.

Addressing a huge public rally at Kaliabor, the Lok Sabha seat which the regional Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) is contesting in alliance with the BJP, Mr Shah said that his government has succeeded in stopping the infiltration during the last five years. “The task to identify all the infiltrators living in Assam now remains and we promise to accomplish that task too by throwing each and every infiltrator out of Assam over the next five years,” said the BJP president while asking the party workers to ensure the victory of their alliance candidate on such seat.

The AGP has fielded Moni Madhav Mahanta, a former vice-president of the influential All Assam Students’ Union, to contest against former Congress chief minister Tarun Gogoi’s son Gaurav Gogoi from Kaliabor. The BJP president chose to sound the poll bugle from a constituency of its alliance partners in an obvious bid to strengthen the bonding among them besides ensuring conversion of votes to each other. AGP chief Atul Bora and many other party leaders shared the dais with Mr Shah, who was accompanied by chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal and his deputy Himanta Biswa Sarma.

Mr Shah also alleged that the Congress had been patronising Bangladeshi infiltrators and had encouraged them to encroach on forest land at the Kaziranga National Park.

“These infiltrators had turned into rhino poachers. Over the last three years, the BJP-led alliance government has evicted these infiltrators from Kaziranga and the poaching of rhinos, the pride of Assam, has also stopped,” said Mr Shah. He added that Bangladeshi infiltrators had also been evicted from the huge tracts of lands belonging to the Vaishnavite satras that they had “occupied illegally under the patronage of the earlier Congress governments in the state”.