‘North-East Suffered for 70 Years, PM Modi United Region in 9 Years’: Assam CM Sarma Lists Highlights

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said that while the “North-East suffered for 70 years from geographical isolation, political instability and imbalanced development, intentional ploys to divide and rule by Congress governments, in the past nine years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has extensively focused on connecting and uniting the region”.

In a series of tweets, Sarma said: “The relentless focus on connectivity is not restricted to building physical linkages but winning the faith of the people by cementing emotional linkages. To begin with, Hon PM himself visited the region 60 times and his Council of Ministers, 400 times in last 9 years.”

The CM said that “no Central Government, since 1947, has invested so much political capital in a region, where some states send just 1 MP to the Lok Sabha”. “Consider this, in 2023, for the first time a Union Home Minister stayed overnight in an Arunachal town close to China border and spent a night in Nagaland,” he wrote.

“While the culture of flying visits has ended and so has the culture of NE leaders travelling to Delhi asking for funds. Since 2014, Rs 3.64 lakh crore has been spent on the region under the Gross Budgetary Support Scheme of the Union Budget,” said Sarma, adding, “Consequently, several conflicts in the region that lasted for 70 years were resolved in 9 years. Be it the Bodo, Karbi conflict in Assam; the issues of Brus in Mizoram or the NLFT insurgency in Tripura, many such discords have been extinguished under leadership of Hon PM. Not just insurgency, we had infighting. Ad hoc formation of North Eastern States by the Cong meant states were fighting with states on boundary issues for 50 years or more. Most such matters involving Assam, Arunachal, Meghalaya & Nagaland are nearing amicable resolution. The result? In 9 years, there has been a 74% reduction in insurgency and 89% drop in civilian deaths in North East. Geographical application of AFSPA has been greatly reduced, not due to a cottage industry agitating against it but due to an improved security climate.”

Commenting on the physical connectivity, Sarma said: “From 1947 to 2014, expenditure on infrastructure projects in the North East was Rs 2 lakh crore. From 2014 till date, this figure stands at Rs 7 lakh crore. The National Highway network has expanded 86% in last 9 years. The allocation for Rail Expansion in North East has increased by 263% in last 9 years. For the first time ever, all Seven Sisters States will be connected by a common rail network. 2000 km of track is either being laid or upgraded at a cost of Rs 75,000 cr…90% increase in airports in NE has made our region the fastest growing air traffic zone in the country 20 of our rivers are now part of National Waterways. A ₹9000 cr gas pipeline will connect us to the Nation’s Gas Grid and months within its launch, we are on the 5G map.”

He concluded the thread saying: “The biggest evidence of this holistic transformation of connectivity in the North East is that for 2 consecutive times, 7 states in our region have voted for the NDA in State and Parliamentary elections. Empty Vessels make more noise but action speaks louder than words!”