The Northeast Students’ Organisation (NESO), the apex body of students’ unions from all over the region, on Tuesday demanded extension of Inner Line provisions to the entire Northeast and also strengthening of anti-infiltration measures to prevent a demographic invasion.

“We want the Inner Line system to cover the entire region. We also demand a comprehensive policy from the Government of India for tackling increasing illegal infiltration from Bangladesh,” Samujjal Bhattacharyya and Gumjum Haider, chairman and secretary-general respectively of the NESO, said.

The apex student body said the entire Northeast was under the grip of infiltrators and this was happening only because successive governments failed to check the influx and expel those who have entered illegally.

“The All Assam Students’ Union had way back in the 1980s raised the slogan of saving Assam to save India. While the Government did not heed to our call then, today the entire country is facing an onslaught of fundamentalist elements,” Bhattacharyya, who is also advisor of AASU, said.

The NESO leaders said Pakistan’s ISI and al-Qaeda apart from 15 other fundamentalist groups were operating in the Northeast from across the Indo-Bangladesh border, “but the Government is yet to wake up and come out with a comprehensive and effective policy.”

“Successive Governments and various political parties are only out to protect the infiltrators just for the sake of their votes,” they alleged. The NESO also demanded ouster of Chakma and Hajong refugees who were temporarily shifted to Arunachal Pradesh after they were discriminated against in erstwhile East Pakistan in the 1960s.

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