AIUDF urges Assam CM to stop 'bulldozing' madrasas

Guwahati, Sep 1

All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) supremo and Lok Sabha member Badruddin Ajmal on Thursday urged Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma Sarma to stop bulldozing madrasas.

Ajmal's request to the Chief Minister came after the Bongaigaon district administration bulldozed Markazul Ma'arif-u-Kariyana Madrassa, a private-run Madrasa, at Kabaitari in the Jogighopa area on Wednesday "in a bid to foil the alleged terror activities".

"Such actions are a direct attack on the education of children in the minority dominated areas of Assam. Madrasas are public properties and these cannot be demolished without any prior legal notice," the AIUDF chief told the media.

Noting that the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has stopped using bulldozers, Ajmal urged the Assam Chief Minister to stop such unethical plans.

Accusing the RSS for the plan of bulldozing madrasas, he said: "If any person is arrested for his link with jihadi organisations or any kind of anti-national activities, the government can initiate action against such individual as per the law. Madrasas never teach hatred or communalism and demolishing them is illegal and unethical. Demolishing Madrasa is denying of education of children specifically for Muslim children."

AIUDF has 15 MLAs in the 126-member Assam assembly. With the demolishing of Bongaigaon madrasa, the Assam government bulldozed three madrasas after the arrest of 37 people in little over a month for alleged links with the Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and the Ansarul Bangla Team, a Bangladesh-based terror outfit.

Bongaigaon administration citing a District Disaster Management Authority "assessment" said that the Markazul Ma'arif-u-Kariyana Madrassa was "unsafe and was being used for multiple activities without proper documents", and it gave less than 24 hours to the occupants of the madrasa to vacate.

Earlier on August 26, the police arrested Mufti Hafizur Rahman, who was a teacher at the madrasa since 2018, from the Goalpara district.

The police claimed that Rahman has links with "jihadi" organisation.

Recently, the National Investigation Agency filed charge-sheet against eight of the 37 arrested for reported links with fundamentalist organisations. Of the eight, seven are from western Assam's Barpeta district and one from Tripura.

The Assam government had handed over the cases of "jihadi terror modules" to the NIA after the preliminary investigation.

The Assam Chief Minister recently said that the government is now preparing Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the new Imam who are coming to the state from outside.