Students’ body serves 15-day deadline on Arunachal government to resume census of Chakmas, Hajongs

By Express News Service

GUWAHATI: Against the backdrop of the charge of racial profiling of Buddhist Chakmas and Hindu Hajongs, the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU) served a 15-day deadline on the state’s BJP government demanding the resumption of the census of the “refugees”.

The students’ body claimed the government had stopped the exercise after receiving a letter from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

AAPSU general secretary Tobom Dai said the PMO had on December 7 sought a response from the state government after the Chakma Development Foundation of India (CDFI) petitioned it, alleging racial profiling of the people belonging to the two communities. Dai dismissed the charge.

“It was a regular administrative exercise, aimed at maintaining the data of the refugees for safeguarding the interests of the indigenous people. The state government must not buckle under any external pressure,” he said.

On December 1, the extra assistant commissioner of Diyun circle in Changlang district of eastern Arunachal held a meeting with Chakma and Hajong leaders days after, what the CDFI claimed, the district magistrate had notified the “Census of Chakmas and Hajongs 2021” at all Chakma and Hajong-inhabited areas of the district “for a report to be submitted to the government on or before December 31, 2021”.

The CDFI said the census had sought personal information such as bank account and employment details and pending criminal cases.

“This exclusive census is an act of racial profiling as only the Chakmas and Hajongs are being singled out. Arunachal shares its borders with China and Myanmar from where illegal migration has been taking place since independence,” CDFI chairman Suhas Chakma said.

But Changlang DM, Devansh Yadav had said the December 1 meeting was convened not to start a census but inform the villagers how the process would be executed if at all approved.

There are about 65,000 Chakmas and Hajongs in Arunachal. After being displaced by a dam in the then East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh), they were resettled in Arunachal during 1964-69 by the central government.