Thousands squatted on rail track, NH to demand land for AMU Centre
Patna,(BiharTimes): Tens of thousands of people squatted on rail track and National Highway-31 for the whole day on Wednesday asking the Nitish Kumar government to allot land for the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in Kishanganj and stop playing politics. The stir was called off late on Wednesday night after it disrupted the road and rail links to the entire North-East.
The district headquarters never witnessed such a massive show of strength in the recent decades. Elected representatives of all the non-NDA parties––some even from West Bengal––converged to the place.
The dharna took place at different places in the district, disrupting rail services on the Delhi-Guwahati section of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR). However, no untoward incident was reported.
The demonstrators were led by Kishanganj Congress MP Maulana Asrarul Haque. The call was given by Kishanganj Education Movement following three days of other demonstrations.
Among those who attended a huge gathering outside the collectorate included West Bengal cabinet minister Chaudhari Abdul Karim, Raiganj (Bengal) MP Deepa Das Munshi and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) general secretary and MP Tariq Anwar.
Apart from these leaders, MLAs of Kishanganj, Araria, Baisi of Purnea and former MPs and MLAs addressed the crowd. Akhtar-ul-Iman (RJD), Zakir Husain (LJP), Mohammad Afhaq, Dr Javed, Mohammad Touseef (all Congress) and West Bengal MLAs Ghulam Rabbani and Ali Ramz alias Victor, former Bihar minister Haji Subhan, Araria Zila Parishad chief Shagufta Azim, ex-Kishanganj Zila Parishad chief Faiyaz Alam and protagonists of Jamiat-ulema-e-Hind and AMU Students Union president A A Feroz were prominent among those present there.
According to Kishanganj Education Movement convener Shafi Ahmad the state government is deliberately not making suitable land available for the setting up of the special AMU centre in Kishanganj for the past two years. On the request of the state government, AMU vice-chancellor P K Abdul Azis visited the site twice since 2010 and surveyed the earmarked land but not a single piece of land has been transferred to AMU so far.
The decision to open five Off Campus AMU Centres was taken by UPA-I in 2008 when late Arjun Singh was HRD minister and M A A Fatmi of RJD was the minister of state of HRD. The original proposal was to open the campus in Katihar, but the Nitish government refused to give land there and insisted on Kishanganj. Yet it is yet to give land more than two and a half years later.
The other places chosen for Centres included Murshidabad in West Bengal, Mallapuram in Kerala, Kishanganj in Bihar, Pune in Maharashtra and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. Later two more centres were added––one in Assam and other in Andhra Pradesh.
Of five centres, two centres, one at Murshidabad in West Bengal and another in Mallapuram in Kerala, have already started study centres in a private building even while construction work was on.
