Land for landless, youth self-employment among key priorities of new BTC: EM
BTC Executive Member Derhasat Basumatary outlines key priorities of the new council under Hagrama Mahilary, while the BPF’s role in the NDA remains undecided.
Derhasat Basumatary (Photo - Next EM Derhasat Basumatary BPF / Meta)
Kokrajhar, Nov 18: Providing land to deserving landless people as per the law will be one of the thrust areas for the newly constituted Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) under the leadership of Hagrama Mahilary.
This was disclosed by Executive Member (EM) of the BTC, Derhasat Basumatary. He also revealed that the role of the Bodoland People's Front (BPF) in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is yet to be finalised.
In an interview with The Assam Tribune, Basumatary said that the people of the Bodoland Territorial Region regard land as their bank. Whenever people face any financial hardship, they simply sell off the land and become landless.
There are many such landless people in the area, and that is why the new council has decided to provide land to the landless as per the legal provisions, he added.
Basumatary said that the second thrust area would be to provide self-employment avenues to the unemployed youths. He said that there are a large number of unemployed youths in the BTR, and providing self-employment avenues to them would be a priority of the BTC.
He pointed out that skills, including entrepreneurial skill development of the youths, would be taken as a priority project.
Stress would be given on the development of school education, particularly the improvement of the Bodo medium schools.
Basumatary said that people who have money send their children to the English medium school, and that is one of the main reasons for the deterioration of the results of the Bodo medium schools.
However, he admitted that there are other problems, like a short-age of teachers. He said that it is difficult to get teachers for Science and Mathematics for the Bodo medium schools.
In the health sector, Basumatary said that the shortage of doctors is a major problem in the area. He said that the BTR area is malaria-prone and the number of patients is quite high compared to the availability of doctors. He said that the number of TB patients is also high in the area.
The BTC will request the State Government to post specialist doctors in the area to deal with the problem, he added. He also asserted that the BTC would implement all the flagship programmes of the Central and State Governments.
On the political scene, Basumatary said that the role of the BPF in the NDA is yet to be finalised.
One MLA of the BPF has recently been inducted into the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led Government, but the UPPL, the arch rival of the BPF, is also in the Ministry.
Basumatary said that they agreed to have one Minister in the State Ministry to have better coordination between the State Government and BTC.
"We have told the BJP that if they want to have an executive member in the BTC, we are ready to accept that. But the BJP is yet to join the BTC by nominating one member for inclusion as EM. The ball is now in the court of the BIP" he added.