BJP says Assam region "not safe" in Congress hands

Leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley while participating in a debate on Assam violence in the Rajya Sabha also accused the Centre of adopting a "clerical" approach and urged it not to treat the violence as a law and order problem or "simple crime".

Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on his part said the Assam violence that has so far claimed 74 lives is not an issue concerning BJP or Congress and that it concerned all.

Replying to the debate, Shinde said the government was taking the issue "very seriously" and has already initiated a CBI inquiry to ascertain the causes behind the violent incidents.

Jaitley charged the government with adopting the policy of vote-bank politics which was the root cause of the violence and alleged that the region was "not safe in its hands" if such a policy continued.

The BJP leader also urged the government to have a relook at "this vote-bank policy" and start identifying the real problem of illegal infiltration that was causing unrest in the area.

"If you adopt the original line of Gopinath Bordoloi (who wanted the cultural and linguistic identity of the North East) India will be safe in your hands. But if you adopt vote bank politics, I don't think this region is safe in your hands," he said.

"Here was a government which not only discarded the original Assam line..." but encouraged illegal infiltration enmasse in search of votebank politics, he added.

Noting that the infiltrators posed a serious security threat to to India, Jaitley said, "No country allows encroachment by infiltrators like this."

He accused the government of not allowing identification of illegal immigrants and their deportation through the Foreigners Act and instead formed Tribunals to do so, resulting in a number of illegal immigrants concentrating in the area.