The Sarbananda Sonowal-led Assam Cabinet on Wednesday decided to request the State Election Commission to schedule the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) election in December.
The elections to 40 seats in the Council were to have been held on April 4 but were deferred to the pandemic. The council has been under the Governor’s rule since its dissolution on April 27.
The Governor’s rule ends on October 27.
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“The Cabinet also decided to make Bodo the associate official language in Assam through an ordinance and asked the BTC authority to extensively use Assamese along with Bodo and English on signboards,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said.
Also approved was the issuance of an ordinance to form the Bodo-Kachari Autonomous Council in Bodo community-dominated areas beyond the BTC under the Sixth Schedule.
These decisions are said to have been taken with the BTC polls in mind. The BJP and ally Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), which had been ruling the council since 2003 until its dissolution, have not been in the best of terms in recent times.
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There is speculation that the BJP has been cultivating BPF’s rival United People’s Party Liberal, whose president Pramod Boro was a key signatory of the Peace Accord with all factions of a disbanded extremist group in January.
Among the Cabinet decisions were a few sops for tea plantation labourers, a major chunk of voters that swung from the Congress to the BJP before the 2016 Assembly polls.
With the 2021 State polls about six months away, the Cabinet decided to provide day boarding and free uniform for children of plantation labourers in 428 schools managed by tea estates.
The Cabinet also approved 3% interest subvention of working capital under the Assam Tea Industry’s Special Incentives Scheme 2020, subsidy of ₹7 per kg of orthodox or speciality tea produced, 25% subsidy on cost of plant and machinery of orthodox or speciality tea, and three-year agriculture income tax holiday.
The assurance benefit payable under the Assam Tea Plantations Provident Fund Scheme has also been increased from ₹1 lakh to ₹2 lakh.
Other decisions include regularisation of 4,534 teachers “appointed irregularly”, hike in remuneration of village headmen from ₹6,500 to ₹9,000 with retrospective effect from April 1 and capital subsidy of ₹50,000 to eligible self-help groups under the Vistarita Kanaklata Mahila Sabalikaran Yojana.