Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has said that Hindu migrants from Bangladesh must be accommodated in India and promised to disband detention camps housing them in Assam if he were voted to power in the coming 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing a rally in Silchar yesterday, Mr Modi dwelt at length on the problem of influx of people from Bangladesh into the state.
“Some people have come to fulfill people’s aspirations of votebank politics, while others who have come are those whose lives have been ruined there in Bangladesh,” he said.
He said many Hindus faced a threat in Bangladesh because of the lack of proper security and developed and urged the people of Assam to show their support for such people whose lives had been ruined and who had sought refuge in India.
“If a Hindu faces problems in any part of the world, there is only one place where he will come, and that is India. Should they be treated in the same way as they are treated elsewhere? No, we cannot do that,” he said.
Mr Modi said senior BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee had, during his tenure as Prime Minister, initiated comprehensive schemes for Hindus who had returned from Pakistan and relocated them to different parts of India instead of putting the entire burden on Gujarat or Rajasthan.
Similarly, he said, Assam should not be expected to bear the burden of looking after the Hindu refugees from Bangladesh and they should be relocated to different states. “All states must contribute and they must get treated well,” he said.
Mr Modi accused the Central Government of lack of vision and playing votebank politics and dividing people.
He said Assam had been a victim of such policies and cited the example of tea cultivators in different regions of the state.
“Why is the Congress dividing Brahmaputra and Barak valley” Why are there different prices for the labourers working on tea cultivation in both these regions? The government in Assam cannot do any good for you,” he said.
He said tea cultivators, who gave the state its identity, were living in woeful conditions and their children were deprived of good education and job opportunities.
Mr Modi stressed the need to send back those infiltrators who had entered Assam for political purposes, saying their continuance in the state would rob its people of growth opportunities.
“The infiltrators who have come for political purposes must be sent back there. The right of people cannot be snatched like this,” he said.
He was critical of the Tarun Gogoi government in the state and said the future of the people was not safe in such hands. He said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who represented Assam in the Rajya Sabha, did not know the state as well as he did.
He said the state was blessed with abundant natural resources but it was looted by the votebank politics of the Central government.
“The Assam Government cannot rise over votebank politics. The way they have abused human rights in the name of detention camps is appalling,” he said.
“Why cannot we have institutions like All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) in the state?” he asked, calling for better infrastructure in the state.