RBI reviews credit flow to North East

VEPA Kamesam, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India met senior bank officials and top officials of the North-Eastern states in Shillong and reviewed the flow of credit to the region. The P M Sirajuddin, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Finance (Banking Division) and Sajal Mitra from DONER joined the deliberations. Banks were represented by Hariharan, Deputy Managing Director, State Bank of India, Prithvi Raj, Executive Director, UBI and V N Saxena, Executive Director, Central Bank of India, Dr K G Karmakar, Executive Director, NABARD.

The discussions were centered on ways and means to improve    CD ratio in the North-East region. The progress made by banks in  each State regarding issue of    Kisan Credit Cards and micro-finance through self help groups  was reviewed.

RSS targets BSF, guns for ‘inaction’ in Barak

THE Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is angry with the BSF. It holds the border sentinels responsible for the spurt in ISI-backed activities in the North-East, particularly Barak valley. The RSS is also targeting the national press and electronic media for not giving proper coverage to these issues. “This attitude exposes the highly partisan attitude of the so-called national media”. “People have no faith in BSF. BSF people in certain border posts are suspected to act as the accomplices of the trans-border terrorists and Bangladeshi Muslims. Through such dastardly acts, the ISI and its accomplices wish to create a situation in which the Hindus would feel extremely insecure and be forced to flee to interior villages. Once the border villages are completely inhabited by Muslims, it would be easy for the ISI in carrying on with infiltration and anti-national activities on a large scale”, RSS alleges.

RSS’s Dakshin Asom sakha also expressed serious concern over the alarming rise in criminal activities in Barak Valley namely Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi areas. The release by the alleged that these activities are being perpetrated by the people belonging to the minority community.

The RSS gave a catalogue of ‘activities’ indulged in by the infiltrators. These range ‘from rape and murder of innocent teenaged Hindu girls to abduction of Hindus from border villages to desecration of Hindu temples and breaking up of idols’, it said in a statement thereby hurting.

On August 25, 2003, a school student named Kalpana Dey (aged 15 years) was kidnapped while returning from Eraligool High School under Patherkandi PS of Karimganj district and was gang-raped and murdered by a group of Muslim miscreants. Eklachuuer Rahman, a suspected Bangladeshi; Adbul Kadir, Akram Ali and Trafajjul Ali were allegedly involved in this heinous crime”, says the RSS statement.

Another allegation: “During the night on August 31, a Kali temple, situated near the Karimganj Railway Station Gate was desecrated and the idols of Kali and Lord Siva were broken by some unknown miscreants. The police arrested some miscreants belong to the minority community. But due to the pressure from the ruling political party in the State, the police is trying to hush-up the incident”.

Yet another RSS allegation: on September 5, an incident of desecration of Siva temple and mutilation of idol also took place in the valley. “On September 6, at around 1 p.m., a group of 25 people crossed the Indo-Bangla Border, walked about 6 kilometre into the India

border and abducted Manindra Nath (35) and Chittaranjan Nath (50) from a village near Nilambazar, south Karimganj at gun-point. Of these 25 people, 10-12 people were gun-wielding terrorists, while the rest were lungi-clad Bangladeshi or Indian Muslims, wielding lathis, spears and daggers”. A bandh was also observed in Cachar and Karimganj districts on September 3 in protest against these crimes.

VHP concerned over conversions

VISHWA Hindu Parishad (VHP) has voiced grave concern at the ‘unabated conversion’ in the country in general and the North-East in particular. The conversions are becoming difficult to check due to the involvement of big foreign money, some Rs18, 000 crore per year from Muslim and Christian world, VHP claims. Every year eight lakh Hindus are being converted to other faiths and the forces behind this nefarious practice are taking advantage of the poverty and ignorance of the people,” said Y Raghavalu, VHP’s all-India joint secretary.

Alleging that even the Home Ministry has turned a blind eye to the evil designs of the agents of conversion, the VHP leader complained that the Indian organisations receiving foreign funds for conversions never submit any utilisation reports as required under the law to the Ministry; he is surprised ‘the Ministry too has failed to pull them up for the lapse’. Citing infiltration and conversion as the biggest challenges before the nation, Raghavalu said the VHP has launched a number of ‘awakening’ drives to make people realise the gravity of the situation.

“We are reaching out to interior and backward areas and providing the poor people, especially the tribals, with education, health care facilities, etc.,” VHP functionary said. Expressing the view that the Hindus are now being subjected to second-class treatment in their own country, Raghavallu said the growing incidence of desecration and destruction of Hindu places of worship, as also the crimes and tortures perpetrated on the Hindus, especially girls, were a pointer to this grim reality.

“In the past few months alone, 600 Hindu girls have been kidnapped from different parts of Assam by Muslims,” he said, adding that among them 32 have been rescued by Bajrang Dal activists. “The Hindu sentiment is sought to be crushed by alien forces but sadly, the Government and the administration has remained a silent spectator,” he said.

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