Assam govt to table Tewari Commission report on 1983 Nellie massacre in Assembly ahead of polls

Guwahati: Forty two years after the massacre of "immigrant" Muslims at Nellie in Assam had shocked the nation, the BJP-led government in the state on Thursday decided to table the Tewari Commission inquiry report in the Assembly in November, months before the state goes for polls.

The Tewari Commission was constituted by the Congress government with Hiteswar Saikia as the Chief Minister and the report was submitted to the government in 1985.

Announcing the Cabinet decision on Thursday evening, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters that it was decided to table the report in the Assembly to allow the new generation to know the situation in which the massacre had taken place.

"Governments in the past did not make the report public as the signature of Tewari was not in the report. So the government was not sure whether it was genuine or not. There are only three copies of the report with the government now. We spoke to the clerical staffs who had worked with the inquiry commission and even conducted forensic analysis and now we are convinced that the report is genuine," Sarma said.

The report was not made public by the governments in the past citing its sensitive nature.

Assam Agitation

The Assam Agitation was spearheaded by the All Assam Students' Union and All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad after the Centre had decided to go ahead with Assembly elections in 1983 despite detection of a large number of suspected foreigners in the electoral rolls.

The agitators had demanded that the electoral rolls be reviewed first before going for the polls. The six-year-long agitation that had also witnessed the deaths of 856 people belonging to indigenous communities, culminated into the Assam Accord in 1985, during the tenure of Rajiv Gandhi as the PM. The accord promised to detect, delete and deport post-1971 migrants from Bangladesh.

The decision to table the Tewari Commission report was taken amid an eviction drive being carried out the BJP-led government targeting the Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam. This, according to the Opposition parties, are being done as part of polarisation politics of BJP in the run up to Assembly elections slated in April.

Population norms, lands

Sarma said the Cabinet also decided to relax the population control norms for the tribals, tea garden workers, Moran and Mottock communities, allowing them to give birth to more than two children. The present population control policy, passed in 2017, prohibits those with more than two children from applying for government jobs and contesting panchayat elections.

CM said the decision was taken based on recommendations of social scientists and to prevent the communities from becoming minority.

CM said the Cabinet also approved in principle to allot land to nearly four lakh tea garden workers. The amount of land will be decided after consulting the district commissioners and other stakeholders, he said.

The move comes amid the strong agitation and the criticism BJP is facing from the tea garden workers and five other ethnic communities (including Moran and Mottock) for its failure to meet its pre-poll promise of according Scheduled Tribe status.