Assam Congress Demands 'Immediate Action' Against BJP MLA Mrinal Saikia for Inciting Violence

Guwahati, December 27, 2019:

Leader of Opposition Debabrata Saikia on Friday demanded "immediate action" against the Khumtai BJP MLA Mrinal Saikia for his provocative speech in Upper Assam's Chabua, where he had seemingly incited violence against the Citizenship Amendment Act protesters.

https://www.facebook.com/ne.inside/videos/457180428303920/

Addressing the media, Debabarata Saikia criticized the BJP leader statement. Saikia, condemning the BJP leader's statement, said that since many people have been arrested for posting inappropriate posts in social media amid the CAA unrest, the BJP MLA deserves a similar fate. “Therefore, I demand immediate action against Mrinal Saikia for making such provocative remarks", the Congress leader said.

ALSO READ: Assam: Tarun Gogoi Demands BJP to Prove it can Win 100 Seats, Calls for Immediate Assembly Election

It may be mentioned here that Mrinal Saikia, a BJP MLA from Khumtai in Upper Assam, incited his followers to violence in the wake of the protests against the 'CAA'.

Addressing his followers at Chabua in Dibrugarh, a site of massive protests against the Bill-turned-Act, Mrinal Saikia thundered, “The BJP has become strong, you can be strong too. You all just have to come out…have tolerated enough. If someone comes to burn your house, you also burn down their houses. If they touch one worker of ours, do the same with 10 of their workers.”

The MLA also said that the protesters are trying to instill fear in the hearts of the BJP supporters. “They want to instill fear so that the BJP leaders don’t come out. You must have seen in the movies that when 10 goons move around, 2-3 villages stay quiet

They want to instill fear among the people.”

Issuing a threat to the anti-CAA brigade, he said, “I’ll ask them after 6 months or 1 year – Where are the Bangladeshis? I’ll ask them to show us Bangladeshis and if they can’t, they will face the payback.”

Saikia also lampooned the anti-CAA protests and said that in total, not even 1 lakh people have joined the protests. “In a land with 3.5 crore people, just a few groups of them came out in protest (of CAA). Are they the public? And the rest who stayed inside their homes

And said that these (protests) are not right. Burning tires, property damage, etc. is bad, they are not public?”

ALSO READ: Kazakhstan Plane Crash: Nine People Killed as Plane with 95 People on Board Crashes

Alleging that the anti-CAA leaders are using the protests as a means to fill their pockets, Saikia said, “You can enquire from the shops later, how many donations they collected in the name of protests.”

Saikia’s divisive tirade at a public function has landed him the soup, with many sections of the public condemning him for his incendiary remarks during a volatile and sensitive atmosphere. Arguably, the sentiment in Assam is an ‘anti-CAA’ one, with lakhs upon lakhs still pouring onto the streets in protest. In a recent protest in Dibrugarh itself spearheaded by AASU, aerial drone footage showed a great number of people — over a lakh.

Support Inside Northeast (InsideNE), an independent media platform that focuses on Citizen-centric stories from Northeast India that are surprising, inspiring, cinematic and emotionally relevant.