Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said no border village would be allowed to remain backward and any kind of exodus from these dwellings would be prevented. He further said if the BJP comes to power for the third time in the state, every single infiltrator would be removed.He was speaking during a programme in Assam’s Cachar district, where he launched the second leg of the Centre’s Vibrant Villages Programme (VVP–II), under which around 2,000 villages in border districts of the country would be developed at a cost of Rs 6,839 crore. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and other leaders were also present on the occasion.”If the BJP again comes to power in the state for the third time, efforts will be made to make Assam flood-free,” the Home Minister added. Attacking the Congress, Shah said during that party’s rule, Assam faced the scourge of infiltrators, as the Congress governments had violated borders and allowed infiltrators to enter, who snatched food, land and jobs from the state’s youth.”In 2016, people of Assam brought the BJP to power and in the first five years we stopped infiltrators. In the second term, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma got lands occupied by infiltrators vacated and got them banished. If the BJP comes to power for the third time, we promise to remove every single infiltrators from the state. We have done what the Congress did not do in 50 years,” Shah said.Talking about the Vibrant Villages Programme, Shah said that all basic facilities, similar to those available in any other village in India, will be provided to these 140 villages in Assam. The programme also includes villages in Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The Home Minister further said that the programme includes several schemes related to security, saturation of welfare schemes and connectivity to these border villages.The Home Minister further said that languages and their scripts should not be turned into political issues or subjects of controversy, while emphasising that there was no conflict between Hindi and other Indian languages. Addressing the joint regional official language conference (Rajbhasha Sammelan) of the Eastern, North-Eastern and Northern regions in Agartala, the Home Minister urged upon all stakeholders in the Northeastern region not to politicise languages or create controversies over scripts.Shah emphasised the use of ‘Nagari Lipi’ for local languages, saying that it would help protect linguistic identities.Noting that there are over 200 dialects across the eight Northeastern states, Shah said the region is home to more than 50 festivals, many ethnic communities, numerous dance forms and a vast diversity of cultures. He said countries that have effectively used their own languages for governance and education have witnessed faster and more inclusive development.“Some languages do not have scripts, but concrete steps must be taken to preserve such oral languages,” the Union Minister said, while dismissing criticism against Hindi and asserting that there is absolutely no conflict between Hindi and other Indian languages.Claiming that the Northeastern region is the most appropriate place to strengthen Rajbhasha Hindi, Shah praised the people of Tripura, noting that Bengali, the tribal Kokborok language and Hindi are used simultaneously in the state.
