Speeches (Vol. IV)

Maharashtra State certainly can take financial risk in this matter, because this is one of the States whose finances are well managed and who can afford to take socio-economic risks in taking some bold decisions and showing a new way in this particular matter. So, this question of the scheme for defaulters and treating them as sick units and giving them some facilities for them should be settled because being defaulters they do not get tacavi from the Government, they do not get credit from the bank. Not only that, the Government officers go and auction whatever they have got in their own premises. So, this question needs priority consideration.

When this movement started, at that time I had an occasion to deal with it in the previous government. At that time the demand was that the elections should be given up and as a result the elections could not -be held in many parts of Assam. Nobody should even for very good purposes try to block the democratic process of holding elections in the country when the national parliament was going to be constituted. Naturally, I had tried my best in meeting the students delegations, political parties delegations and in one of the trips to Gauhati, even after staying there for a couple of days, these efforts could not produce any results because I knew that the problem is not amenable to a simplistic solution. There are deep fears, suspicions and anger involved in this. This is based on the feeling that there are large numbers of foreigners staying in Assam and as a result of which the people of Assam felt that economically and culturally they are overwhelmed and, therefore thy should be deported. (Interruptions). Quite right. As you say, they want that they should be deleted from the voters list. First of all, they did not want elections and now they want the voters lists should be purified according to their concept of purification. I personally feel that there is a deep contradiction in Assam’s life because this problem is a very complex problem - the problem of the so - called - foreigners. It is a complex problem and in a way it is an accumulated problem because in the course of 10 to 20 years this question has been raised many times. I remember having dealt with it as the Home Minister and I then agreed to appoint tribunals to look into the cases of suspected foreigners. I do not know how those tribunals came to be discontinued. Personally, I am not aware of it. I persuaded them to have the tribunals so that there may be some machinery which can help to remove the suspicious in their minds.

Now the point is that very extreme positions have been taken. The people who are the sponsors of the movement feel that there are more than fifty to sixty lakhs of people who are foreigners. Of course, some of us and I think all the parties - I am sure about it - agreed to one thing, that this question will have to be solved through negotiations and when we say that this problem should be negotiated, it presumes that there are some foreigners. There are some foreigners and that section of foreigners should be dealt with. The question is : how it should be dealt with on what principles and criteria etc. Really speaking, these are the questions, the Prime Minister has given a call for the withdrawal of this movement and I, on behalf of my Party, support that call for withdrawal because unless there is withdrawal of this movement, there would not be any proper negotiations or proper discussions as to on what principles this should be discussed.