Assam, India (BBN)-Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Tuesday urged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take up the issues with immediate concern to Assam- including that of the vexed infiltration problem- with his Bangladeshi counterpart during his ensuing two-day Bangladesh visit that begins on June 6.
Gogoi, in a statement issued in Assam, said that prime minister should take up the matter to bolster water and surface communication of Assam with Bangladesh and introduce railway link to utilize the geographical proximity between two geographical entities to harvest optimum benefits in the areas of trade and commerce, reports The Indian Express.
He also requested the prime minister to raise before his Bangladeshi counterpart the issue of cross-border infiltration as well as that relating to deporting illegal migrants from Bangladesh detected in Assam by the Foreigners’ Tribunals.
The Foreigners’ Tribunals in Assam have since 1985 declared over 38,000 persons as foreigners who had illegally entered the state from Bangladesh.
Most of these persons, however, have gone missing soon after they were declared as foreigners.
The Assam Police have, in the past few weeks, issued notice through newspaper advertisements giving details of such persons who have been absconding after they were declared foreigners.
Gogoi, who had in 2011 accompanied the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Bangladesh when the two countries had signed the Land Boundary Agreement protocol, however is not in Modi’s entourage in his ensuing trip to Dhaka.
“I have not been invited to be part of the prime minister’s entourage to Bangladesh,’ Gogoi had said last week.