News

KOKRAJHAR, April 18— About 3250 families, residing in relief camps since the outbreak of ethnic riots in Kokrajhar, have been recently sent back home under a rehabilitation package by the Kokrajhar district administration. Their rehabilitation has been made possible after the release of Rs 3 crore in February. So far, about 5,100 families have been rehabilitated. According to Kokrajhar deputy commissioner Dr Ashish K Bhutani, the recently rehabilitated families have been drawn from the Sapkata, Dorogaon, Patgaon, and Sonapur relief camps. The rehabilitation process was completed in the first...

GUWAHATI, April 18 — The banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) is desperately trying to remain in the limelight by attacking soft targets. Over the past few months, the outfit has been severely weakened by the killing of several middle-level leaders all over Assam and the clash of personalities among its top leadership. Security sources said here that the desperation of the ULFA is evident from the fact that it chose to attack the Digboi refinery last month despite it being designated as world heritage site. The Digboi refinery, set up in 1901 is the first refinery in India and among...

NEW DELHI, April 18 — Launching of massive marketing campaign to promote North Eastern Region (NER) as a tourist destination, contradict the performance of the Tourism Ministry, as funds allocated for the Region for development and promotion of tourism go unutilised during the last financial year. The Departments of Tourism and the Region’s State Governments seem yet to wake up from the intertia, as funds go waste but no perceptible improvement on the ground so much so that exercises to fully explore the tourism potential of the region are yet to be undertaken.

The Department of Tourism has...

New Delhi, April 17: The Union home ministry has traced the genesis of the bloody Dimasa-Hmar ethnic feud in Assam to a resolution adopted by the North Cachar Hills District Council to rename the district as “Dima Halali”.

Sources in the ministry said the resolution was the first of several “deliberate attempts” to create a chasm between the Dimasas and other communities of North Cachar Hills district and adjoining Cachar.

There was an “uneasy calm” in North Cachar Hills immediately after the resolution was adopted in January. The restive atmosphere boiled over in the next couple of months...

April 17: As Cachar and North Cachar continue to burn, another ethnic conflict is brewing in neighbouring Karbi Anglong over granting of Scheduled Tribe (hill) status to the Bodos living in the hill district.

Assam home commissioner B.K. Gohain told The Telegraph that security in Karbi Anglong has been beefed up in view of the indefinite road and rail blockade called by the militant outfit, the Karbi Anglong and North Cachar Hills People’s Resistance — a frontal organisation of the anti-talks faction of the United People’s Democratic Solidarity.

The blockade is scheduled to begin on April 25...