Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has assured the All Assam Students Union that the Centre was committed to solving the State's problems and finding a permanent solution to unabated infiltration from across the border. An AASU delegation, led by its general secretary Amiya Kumar Bhuyan, which met the Prime Minister recently in New Delhi, expressed anguish over the Government's 'failure' to implement the historic Assam accord.

Meanwhile, two Central teams led by senior officials will visit Assam this month to take stock of the State's worsening flood and malaria problems and the steps being taken to control the two menaces.

This assurance was given to a delegation of All-Assam Students Union (AASU) which met officials in the Water Resources and Health Ministries here recently, the student body's adviser Samujjal Kumar Bhattacharya said.

The delegation demanded during their meeting with the Water Resources Secretary Z. Hasan and senior officials of the Ministry, that Assam's massive water wealth, especially of the mighty Brahmaputra, be used properly for the benefit of the people and the flood menace be treated as a national problem.

"We also demanded a fixed timeframe for preparation of the long-pending master plan of the Brahmaputra Board and also the implementation of the Dihang, Subansiri and Pagladiya dam projects," Mr. Bhattacharya said.

In the meeting with the Director-General, Health, and other officials of the department, the AASU team complained that effective steps were not being taken to control malaria which was spreading at an alarming rate in the districts of Nalbari, Kamrup, Darang, Sonitpur, Lakhimpur and Dhemaji.

It also alleged that though the Health Department claimed to have been sending all required malaria medicines to Assam, they had not been received by those affected, and demanded the ministry to look into the matter.

The overall flood situation in Assam today remained grave as the Brahmaputra, swelled by fresh rains in the catchment areas in the upper reaches, inundated vast low-lying areas of the State, official sources in Guwahati said.