GUWAHATI: The Assam government has decided to implement 57 of the 67 recommendations of a committee formed by the Ministry of Home Affairs for the implementation of Clause 6 of the historic Assam Accord.The decision was made at a meeting of the state cabinet held in Lakhimpur on Wednesday evening.The Assam Accord’s Clause 6 says, “Constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.”The accord, signed between the central government and the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) in 1985 at the end of the bloody six-year-long anti-immigrants’ agitation, says the illegal immigrants, who entered Assam after March 24, 1971, are to be detected and deported.Himanta said the Biplab Sarma-led committee was formed to implement Clause 6 of the Assam Accord. He said the committee gave the government three years to examine its recommendations.“There are altogether 67 recommendations. We approved 57 of them for implementation. Following consultations with AASU and other organisations, the cabinet prepared a roadmap for the implementation of the 57 recommendations by April 15, 2025. We will make public these 57 recommendations in the next four to five days,” the Assam CM said.“The remaining 10 recommendations are to be dealt with at the level of Government of India. We will take up those with the Government of India in a phase-wise manner,” he added.The committee prepared its recommendations after a series of meetings with various organisations.The decision of the cabinet comes amid demands by some organisations, especially in upper Assam, for the protection of the rights of indigenous people. The demands were raised in the backdrop of the rape of a minor Assamese girl by three persons, all of them Bengali Muslims, in central Assam’s Nagaon district recently.
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