Votes above Natives

The singular reason why Asom is swarmed with illegal Bangladeshis is the Congress’ patronage of the aliens over the years for cheap electoral gains despite it being aware of the dangerous implications of such policy of appeasement in the matter of national security. Thanks to the Congress, illegal Bangladeshis in Asom have had the unique privilege of transmuting themselves to Indian ‘minorities’ overnight, who must then be protected from ‘harassment’ by the indigenous people in the name of detection and deportation of illegal Bangladeshis. The Congress, in other words, thanks to its ‘secular’ doctrine, would certify every single of the illegal Bangladeshi crowd as an Indian citizen belonging to a particular religious community. And what would be the return? Votes — that is, power on the strength of illegal votes without performance of any kind. It is this fact of life that prompted the Congress to enact the now-scrapped IM(DT) Act by using its brute majority in Parliament in 1983 so that Asom could remain the best living space for illegal Bangladeshis who would eventually vote for the party and make it win elections without it being required to do anything worthwhile for the indigenous people. Given the reality that this newspaper has been harping on without any rejoinder from the Congress till date, and given the fact that the Congress has to its credit a desperate defence of the IM(DT) Act that the Supreme Court in 2005 ultimately declared unconstitutional, it is only too natural that technicalities should now be a pretext to explain the ruling party’s inability to deport immigrants who have been detected as illegal Bangladeshis. As we reported on Tuesday, the Tarun Gogoi government has written to the Centre as many as three times on the problem of deportation of detected illegal Bangladeshis that has stemmed from the refusal of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) to accept the detected immigrants from the Border Security Force (BSF); the BDR argument being that such immigrants should be handed over to Bangladesh through its High Commission after their addresses in that country are verified. However, the Centre has not taken any concrete steps towards that end. But why should it? The chief concern is the illegal Bangladeshi vote, the contest for the vote having become far too tough in recent times due to avatars like AUDF as the new messiah of ‘minorities’ in Asom. So why should people be blamed if they infer that there is a tacit understanding between the Centre and the State government (both Congress-led), and therefore, there is absolutely no action on the problem of deportation of detected illegal Bangladeshis? Why should people be blamed if they infer that the Congress does not want to solve the problem because it will cost the party an eternal vote bank built with such great care?

The Asom Congress glorifies the so-called fact that Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh ‘represents’ the State in the Rajya Sabha and that when he says Asom is his ‘adopted’ State he really means it. But has Dr Singh ever bothered to visit the State to see for himself the process of Bangladesh-ization of Asom? Has he ever even telephoned Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi to ask him the state of affairs in the State in relation to the proliferating illegal Bangladeshi crowd and the jihadi dimension of the threat? Does the Prime Minister know that illegal Bangladeshis have begun to get their children enrolled in madrassas too in the Chief Minister’s own constituency as reported in recent times? Or is it that the ISI-Bangladeshi project for a greater Islamic state a mere invention of the ‘communal’ Hindu mind? It is high time the Congress came up with a convincing answer if Asom’s natives are of any value to it. THE SENTINEL