"Will Reveal...": Himanta Sarma Responds To Leader's Bengali Threat

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said writing Bengali as the mother tongue in census documents will quantify the number of foreigners living in the state.

His comments were in reaction to a statement by All BTC Minority Students' Union (ABMSU) leader Mainuddin Ali, who threatened that all Bengali-speaking Muslims would stop writing Assamese as their mother tongue in the census documents, thereby making the people speaking the state language a minority.

"Language cannot be used as a tool for blackmail. In Assam, Assamese is permanent - both as the state and official language. However, if they write Bengali in the census, it will only quantify the number of foreigners in the state," Mr Sarma told reporters here.

The ABMSU leader made the statement on Wednesday while speaking to the media during a protest in Kokrajhar against eviction drives in Dhubri a day earlier.

Mr Sarma asserted that such threats will not stop eviction drives. "People in the char areas (riverine vegetative islands) have always been writing Bengali as their language. But the indigenous Muslims write Assamese as their language", he said, emphasising Assamese will remain the state language of Assam whether someone writes it in the census documents or not.

Cutting across party lines, all political outfits have condemned Mr Ali's statement and demanded his arrest. A case has also been filed against him at Dispur police station in Guwahati.