News

GUWAHATI, May 6 – Unbridled illegal transfer of land ownership to non-tribals over a vast area under the South Kamrup (Guwahati) tribal belt in the past few years has posed a grave threat to the very existence of the belt itself. Over 200 bighas of land falling under tribal belt at the Dimoria block alone are now owned by non-tribals, thanks to these unlawful dealings.

Revealing this, the Brihattar Dimoria Bhumi Hastantar Nirikshan Samiti, a body of several powerful tribal organisations, today said a sinister nexus among the land officials, mandals and middlemen was working overtime in...

SAIK TAMPAK (Manipur), May 6 : The Army is not ready to take up any Bhutan type operation along the Indo-Myanmar border to flush out insurgents. In the recent past Indian forces had teamed up with their Bhutan counterparts to flush out the United Liberation Front of Assam (ulfa) as well as some other outfits which had camps along the Indo-Bhutan border.

Similarly based on the intelligence inputs, army authorities after identifying the movements of the ultras, recently launched an unnamed flushing out operation since mid-April this year on the ground that many of the banned underground...

New Delhi, May 5: The displaced Bru community of Mizoram is set to return home from the refugee camps of Tripura after seven years of uncertainty and hardship. The militant Bru National Liberation Front (BNLF) and the Mizoram government have drafted an agreement on rehabilitation of the 40,000-odd members of the tribe who were hounded out of the state in 1997.

“The draft of the accord has been finalised and it will be placed before the cabinet for approval very soon. Almost all contentious issues have been resolved and the accord is likely to be signed after May 25, by which time the poll...

Silchar, May 5: When Manju Rikiason votes, she exercises her forefinger, not her mind. The more important job of choosing the candidate is left to the males of her family. The story is the same in household after household in the south Assam tea belt. Illiterate women voters turn up at polling booths to cast their votes in favour of candidates chosen by their equally untutored husbands, fathers or brothers.

Manju, a mother of three, is employed as a leaf-plucker at Doloo tea estate and one of the women voters who were interviewed as part of a University Grants Commission-sponsored study of...

Jorhat, May 5: A census conducted by the forest department in the first week of April recorded an increase in the gibbon population in the gibbon sanctuary at Mariani along the Assam-Nagaland border. In 1998, the population of the gibbons was believed to be around 45 to 50, a forest official said.

The April census recorded 498 primates belonging to seven species. Altogether 65 hollock gibbons belonging to 17 families have been spotted in the sanctuary. “We have found three baby gibbons among the families. This is a positive sign as the breeding of gibbons is limited between a single pair only...