The Assam leaders told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh they would revive the demand for an autonomous state they claim should cover the areas that now come under the Karbi-Anglong and North Cachar Hills autonomous district councils.
Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leaders upped the ante before P. Chidambaram.
Led by Darjeeling MP, ex-BJP leader Jaswant Singh, they told the home minister they didn’t “want to stay with Bengal”.
The minister told them to wait for the outcome of the ongoing tripartite talks and trust the process.
The eight-member Assam team was led by Congress MP Birensingh Engti and member of the Karbi-Anglong council, Mangalsingh Ingati. They were pressing for an “autonomous state within the state of Assam” under Article 244A of the Constitution, specifically inserted through an amendment in 1969, for having a state made up of tribal areas. The demand, which acquired the shape of a movement in the 1980s, now is to implement that provision.
The “autonomous state” would have its own council of ministers, minus home affairs and security, which would be with Assam.
The leaders were learnt to have told the Prime Minister — who is a Rajya Sabha MP from the state — that the “Opposition” could seize the “autonomous state” plank if the Congress didn’t take it up. “It is a question of survival,” one of the leaders is understood to have told the Prime Minister. The team also met Chidambaram.
The Autonomous State Demand Committee, which is spearheading the campaign, controlled both the Karbi-Anglong and North Cachar Hills councils — it also won Assembly and Lok Sabha seats from this region — in the late 1990s. Now, the councils are with the Congress.
The Karbi-Anglong and North Cachar statehood demands aren’t the only ones in the Northeast, which is home to a large number of tribal groups.
Former Intelligence Bureau director P.C. Halder, in talks with the Karbis, is also engaging the Bodos for Bodoland, Garos for Garoland and Dimasas for Dimaraji — to be carved out of parts of Assam as well as Nagaland.
The Gorkhaland delegation sounded more strident, their meetings in Delhi coinciding with fasts and strikes in the Darjeeling hills. “We will not rest till we achieve Gorkhaland. We do not want to stay with Bengal,” Morcha leader Roshan Giri said after the meeting with the home minister.
Darjeeling MP Singh tried to remove the impression that the Morcha leaders were trying to ride piggyback on the Telangana agitation. “The Telangana issue will not be exploited.
Singh said Chidambaram had told them that since the process of talks involving the Centre, the Bengal government and the Morcha was on, it should be relied upon. The next round of the talks is to be held on December 21 in Darjeeling.