The All Bodo Students' Union (ABSU) on Monday warned the Centre of a Manipur-like blockade in the entire northeast if its demand for creation of a separate State of Bodoland was not met.
ABSU president Pramod Boro told The Hindu that leaders of the Joint Action Committee of the Telangana movement would take part in a public meeting to be organised by the students on Tuesday at Thelamar in northern Sonitpur district. The meeting would be the culmination of a five-day cycle rally taken out by ABSU workers and supporters from Srirampur on the Assam-West Bengal border.
The ABSU workers, led by their president and other leaders, carried placards with slogans such as “Divide Assam fifty-fifty” and “No Bodoland, No Rest” during the cycle rally.
“We warn the government not to undermine our Statehood movement and to stop taking a discriminatory attitude to our demand. If the government continues to ignore our demand while going ahead with conceding the demand for creation of a separate Telangana, we will resort to an unprecedented blockade of the National Highway [31] and railway track, which will result in a Manipur-blockade-like situation for the entire northeast,” said Mr. Boro.
‘Told no policy'
He alleged that whenever the Bodos had raised the demand for Statehood, the Centre would say the government had no policy that allowed the creation of new States.
“In 1999, we were told by the then Central government that the creation of a separate Bodoland was not feasible as the government had no policy to create new States. However, only a year later in 2000, the three new States of Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand were created. That is why the ABSU was not a signatory to the second Bodo peace accord signed by the erstwhile Bodo Libertion Tigers (BLT) with the Centre and the Assam government. However, we suspended the Statehood movement to give peace a chance and therefore backed the peace accord.”
