It is my job to make Miya Muslims suffer: Himanta Biswa Sarma
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Guwahati: Assam Chief Minister and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sharma, who is known for his anti-Muslim inflammatory speeches, said on Tuesday that his job is make Miya Muslims “suffer”. ‘Miya’ is the derogatory term used refer to Bengali-speaking Muslims. Hindu nationalists label them as undocumented migrants from Bangladesh, Maktoob Media reported.
Himanta Sarma claimed that four lakh “Miya voters” were deleted in the special revision of electoral rolls in Assam.
He said, “What ‘vote chori’ [vote theft] means to us? Yes, we are trying to steal some Miya votes. Ideally, they should not be allowed to vote in Assam. They should be able to vote in Bangladesh,” Maktoob Media quoted.
“We have made arrangements so that they cannot vote in Assam. But this is preliminary. When the [special intensive revision] comes to Assam, four to five lakh Miya votes will have to be cut,” Sarma said.
“So, let the Congress abuse me as much as they want,” he said. “But my job is to make the Miya people suffer.”
Earlier, the BJP CM said that only Miya Muslims were being served notices under the “special revision” of electoral rolls in the state, saying that the state is giving them trouble.
He made statements that people of the 'Miya' (Bengali-speaking Muslims) community would be harassed during the SR exercise.
Opposition parties in Assam on Sunday alleged gross anomalies in the ongoing Special Revision (SR) of electoral rolls ahead of Assembly polls and notices being served to genuine voters at the behest of the ruling BJP-led dispensation, PTI reported.
The Congress, CPI(M), Raijor Dal and Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), in a joint memorandum to the state's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), sought his "immediate intervention and prompt action for ensuring free and fair exercise of SR in the state." They claimed that "illegal, arbitrary and unlawful bulk objections were filed against genuine voters mainly on the ground of dead voters and permanently shifted voters", adding that in a large number of such cases the objectors have maintained that these were filed without their knowledge.
