Bodo men and women remained busy to greet Prime Minister Narendra Modi with traditional dance, music and food items at a function in western Assam's Kokrajhar district on Friday to celebrate the signing of the new Bodo Accord on January 27.
The accord signed by all major Bodo stakeholders including all four factions of insurgent group NDFB, aims to establish permanent peace and end the movement for a seperate Bodoland state.
According to officials, Modi will address the gathering of nearly five lakh people at 12 noon at Khargaon-Tengapara field in the outskirts of Kokrajhar, about 200-km west of Guwahati.
Kokrajhar was the epicentre of insurgency, which was launched by NDFB in 1986 with a demand for a sovereign country for the Bodos, the second biggest community in Assam. More than 4,000 people including security forces, civilians and militants died during the insurgency.
An accord was signed in 2003 with Bodoland Liberation Tigers led by Hagrama Mohilary, who now heads the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC), which governs four districts. Former deputy Prime Minister L K Advani had also attended a similar celebration in 2003.
Other Bodo groups including NDFB, however, scaled down their demand to a seperate state. "This accord is comprehensive and different from the two signed in 1993 and 2003. All Bodo groups including the All Bodo Students' Union signed it for the first time and agreed that territorial integrity of Assam would remain intact. We are quite sure that permanent peace will prevail in Assam, particularly in the Bodoland region from now. The program has been organised to offer gratitude to Prime Minister Modi and home minister Amit Shah," Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters.
The accord promised to exclude several non-Bodo villages from BTC's ambit and rename the Bodoland Territorial Area Districts into Bodoland Territorial Region. It also promised a special package of Rs. 1,500 crore for development in BTR in the next three years, establish several new higher educational institutes, accord associate official state language status to Bodo language, beside others.
The accord also promised to rehabilitate 1,615 cadres of NDFB, who laid down their arms on January 30 and withdraw cases registered against them.