Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma alleged that the North-East region has suffered from “geographical isolation, political instability and imbalanced development” for 70 years due to the previous “Congress Governments’ intentional ploys to divide and rule”. In a series of tweets, the CM lashes out at the Congress party for the discrimination shown toward the North East during its regime. He tweets, “For 70 years, North East suffered from geographical isolation, political instability and imbalanced development, intentional ploys to divide and rule by Congress Government. In the last nine years, Hon’ble Prime Minister Modi has extensively focused on connecting and uniting our region.”
The Assam CM said, “The relentless focus on connectivity is not restricted to building physical linkages but winning people’s faith by cementing emotional linkages. To begin with, Hon’ble PM himself visited the region 60 times and his Council of Ministers 400 times in the last nine years.” CM Sarma mentioned that several conflicts in the region that lasted for 70 years were “resolved” in nine years of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government at the Centre. Consequently, several conflicts in the region that lasted for 70 years were resolved in nine years. Be it the Bodo, Karbi conflict in Assam, the Brus in Mizoram or the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) insurgency in Tripura, many such discords have been extinguished under the leadership of Hon’ble PM.
CM Sarma said, “No Central Government, since 1947, has invested so much political capital in a region where some States send just one MP to the Lok Sabha. Consider this, in 2023, for the first time, a Union Home Minister stayed overnight in an Arunachal Pradesh town close to the China border and spent a night in Nagaland also.”
The Assam CM also mentioned that even budgetary allocations by the Central Government have shown interest in the region’s development in the last nine years. He tweets, “While the culture of flying visits has ended and so has the culture of North East leaders travelling to Delhi asking for funds. Since 2014, Rs 3.64 lakh crore has been spent on the region under the Gross Budgetary Support Scheme of the Union Budget.”
The CM also pointed out the ad hoc solutions by the then Congress Government in the region, which created conflicts between the states for over 50 years. “Not just insurgency, we had infighting. Ad hoc formation of North-Eastern States by Congress meant states were fighting with states on boundary issues for 50 years or more.
Most such matters involving Assam, Arunachal, Meghalaya & Nagaland are nearing amicable resolution”, CM Sarma said. As a result, in nine years, there has been a 74 per cent reduction in insurgency and an 89 per cent drop in civilian deaths in North East. He added that the geographical application of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) had been greatly reduced, not due to a cottage industry agitating against it but due to an improved security climate. Not only in these matters, but the infrastructure boost the region has achieved in the last nine years is also a milestone for the North East, CM Sarma said. Taking to the microblogging site Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “Now let’s come to physical connectivity. From 1947 to 2014, expenditure on infrastructure projects in the North East was Rs 2 lakh crore. From 2014 till date, this figure stands at Rs 7 lakh crore. The National Highway network has expanded 86 per cent in the last nine years. The allocation for Rail Expansion in North East has increased by 263 per cent in the last nine years. All Seven Sisters States will be connected by a common rail network for the first time. 2000 km of track is being laid or upgraded for Rs 75,000 cr.”
Moreover, the 90 per cent increase in airports in North- East has made our region the fastest-growing air traffic zone in the country. Twenty of our rivers are now part of National Waterways. A Rs 9000 cr gas pipeline will connect us to the Nation’s Gas Grid; we are on the 5G map months after its launch, CM Sarma mentioned. The North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) convenor said that the region’s people have appreciated the good governance and development initiatives by the BJP Government. “The biggest evidence of this holistic transformation of connectivity in the North East is that seven states in our region have voted for the NDA in State and Parliamentary elections twice. Empty Vessels make more noise, but action speaks louder than words!” CM Himanta Biswa Sarma added.
