Assam, Assamese will survive: Gogoi

Staff Reporter GUWAHATI, Jan 10 – The Assamese nationality and the State of Assam will survive in the days to come and nothing can pose threat to their existence, said Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi in the State Assembly here today. He was taking part in the debate on the supplementary demand for grant of the Police Department.Gogoi said that there should not be any attempt at harping on corruption in the Police Department. For, this will send a wrong signal to the people. He however, admitted that corruption was there in the Department.Contrary to the allegations of the Opposition, he said that in the counrty, officers of the Assam Police were known as the most efficient ones.Asserting that there was no political interference in the functioning of the Police Department, he said that there was no formal complaint of such interferences. He also apprised the House that the State Government was going to introduce a bill limiting the tenure of the officers and personnel of the Department at a place to two years, going by an order of the Supreme Court of India.The Government is also setting up a police academy to train up the officers and personnel of the Department in a better manner and a committee has been set up to suggest measures to brighten up the image of the Department, he said.Commenting on the manpower shortage in the Department, he said that new police battalions were being set up, but, here, fund crunch was posing problems. The State Government wants that the Central Government should bear 50 per cent of the burden against the salaries of the officers and personnel employed in these battalions for the next ten years, he said.He reiterated that the State Government was keen on modernising the Police Department and much modernisation of the Department had taken place under the present regime. However, in containing terrorism, cooperation of the people is also needed and people should be made security conscious, he said and asserted that confidence of the people in police had been growing these days and more feed back on the movements of the terrorists were now received from the people.He also claimed that during the seven and half-a-year rule of the Congress 1,544 people were killed in terrorist attacks, whereas during the five-year rule of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) 1,535 people were killed. At present, the terrorists are taking recourse to bomb blasts.If things were allowed to go on as they were during the AGP rule, the number of persons killed during the past seven and half-a-year would have stood at around 2,300, he claimed.In all, he said, police recovered 2,550 bombs and grenades during the rule of the present Government, said Gogoi. The Chief Minister reiterated that his Government was determined to deport the aliens and claimed that his party had no vote bank politics as alleged by the Opposition. He announced his readiness to hold a discussion on secret killing in the Assembly and also agreed to the Opposition’s suggestion that such a discussion should cover the entire period since 1991.After the speech of the Chief Minister the demand of the Police Department for a supplementary grant of Rs 1,520. 65 lakh was passed by the House. source: assam tribune