Jaitley: Illegal immigrants root cause of violence

A day after the spar between Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and senior BJP leader LK Advani jeopardised the BJP’s offensive to corner the government on Assam’s violence, leader of opposition Arun Jaitley sought to turn the tables in the Rajya Sabha, pushing his party’s strong line against unchecked illegal migration from Bangladesh.

A day after the spar between Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and senior BJP leader LK Advani jeopardised the BJP’s offensive to corner the government on Assam’s violence, leader of opposition Arun Jaitley sought to turn the tables in the Rajya Sabha, pushing his party’s strong line against unchecked illegal migration from Bangladesh.

Jaitley articulated the BJP’s position, which is also the RSS stance, that unchecked illegal migration of Bangladeshis into Assam was at the root of the recurring ethnic clashes.

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He also sought to bring to the dock Congress CM Tarun Gogoi’s political strategy, which had given him an unprecedented third term in May 2011 and reduced the BJP and the AGP to a single digit number in the assembly. As home minister Sushil Shinde did not to respond to Jaitely, several BJP leaders said the opposition leader had “nailed” the Congress.

Jaitley charged the government with adopting the policy of vote-bank politics that led to the violence in the state. He said the Centre’s “soft” approach and Gogoi’s scheme of things – balancing fears and concerns of one community against another – won’t work in the long run.

He said, “You must respect the Supreme Court’s verdict that struck down the IMDT Act, which put the onus on authorities to prove migrants were foreigners, and let Foreigners Act to extend to Assam.”

Referring to Assam’s first CM Gopinath Bordoloi he said, “If you adopt the original line of Bordoloi (who wanted cultural and linguistic identity of Northeast), India will be safe in your hands. But if you adopt vote bank politics, I don’t think this region is safe.”