Was there a delay in army deployment in violence hit Assam?
3 Mar, 2013The reply to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has indicated that the impact of violent riots in Assam in mid 2012 could have been less disastrous if the army deployment had taken place in time.
The incidences of violence in Assam started on July 20, 2012 and the state government wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for deployment of army in Kokrajhar and Chirang districts within 24 hours of eruption of violence i.e. on 21st of July. However, as the reply to the RTI application states, MHA took three days to process the state government’s request for army deployment. The ministry sent a fax containing orders for deployment of army personnel to the Director-General Military Operations (DGMO) only on July 24 at 9:22 P.M.
The information about the army deployment could be gathered through an appeal to the appellate authorities as the initial application was rejected. These impact of these violent riots was disastrous and lead to a loss of 70 lives and also displacement of lakhs of people.