GUWAHATI, MAY 18:The Deputy Commissioner is on leave on health grounds, and the Superintendent of Police has gone abroad for training, “but even when they are here, the two top officers of the district hardly respond to what we say,” complained Depolal Hojai, Chief Executive Member of the North Cachar Hills Autonomous Council (NCHAC), here on Sunday.

The NCHAC is the elected local government that runs the administration of the hill district under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, with Hojai of the Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC), a regional political party, heading the Council.

“But even as we run the local government, the responsibility for maintaining law and order is vested with the State Government under the Sixth Schedule. But whenever there is any problem in the district, they tend to put the blame on us,” Hojai told The Indian Express here today. Hojai, whose ASDC party runs the Autonomous Council in coalition with the BJP, added that the Deputy Commissioner and SP also disregard the recommendations of the Autonomous Council on matters of law and order.

“While the law and order situation in the NC Hills has gone from bad to worse in the past few weeks, our feeling is that the Congress-led government in Dispur is happy over it. We had defeated and wrested the Autonomous Council from the Congress in the January elections. That is the reason why the state Government is not responding to us,” he said.

Ever since militants belonging to the Black Widow or DHD(J) group caused havoc in the hill district by targeting employees and contractors of the Indian Railways and the NHAI, the railways have suspended all operations in the NC Hills and have also evacuated its employees from there. As a result, work on two vital national projects—the broad-gauge track between Lumding and Silchar and the East-West Corridor—have come to a standstill. Yet, both Dispur and Delhi do not seem to bother, Hojai said.

The Lumding-Silchar Hill Section is like a lifeline for Barak Valley in southern Assam as well as for Mizoram, Tripura and south Manipur, with essential commodities including foodgrains and cement being transported by the railways through the single metre gauge track. On an average, six trains run between Lumding and Badarpur every day to transport various kinds of essential commodities.

These include four goods trains that, between them, carry about 2,880 tonnes of foodgrains, one rake of petroleum products, as well as sugar, cement, bitumen and raw materials for the HPC paper mill at Panchgram.

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