India to offer gun licences in volatile Bangladesh border areas
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has previously warned that the Assamese-speaking population "face the threat of attacks from the Bangladesh side, and even in their own villages".
The northeastern state of around 31 million people is riven by multiple ethnic, linguistic and religious fault-lines, and was troubled by several bloody clashes in past decades.
Muslims make up roughly 35 percent of the population, most of them Bengali speaking, according to the most recent national census in 2011, with the rest largely Hindus.
Sarma announced on Wednesday the introduction of a website "where indigenous people, who perceive a threat to their lives and reside in sensitive areas, can apply for arms licenses".
India has otherwise strict gun control laws, and critics and opposition leaders condemned the move.
"This will lead to gang violence and crimes based on personal vendettas," said opposition Congress lawmaker Gaurav Gogoi on social media platform X.
"This is not governance, this is a dangerous step backwards towards lawlessness."
Sarma is from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The move is part of a wider populist campaign by Sarma's BJP government backing the majority Assamese-speaking people, including large-scale eviction drives against what he has called "illegal foreigners or doubtful citizens".
It is widely seen as targeting Muslims speaking Bengali -- the main language in neighbouring Bangladesh.
But many ethnic Bengalis are Indian citizens, with roots in Assam long before the region that is now Bangladesh was carved out at the bloody end of British imperial rule in 1947.
Assam was the first state to implement a controversial citizenship verification exercise in 2019, which excluded nearly two million people -- many of them Muslims.
Tensions in Assam have grown in the past year since the overthrow of Bangladesh's autocratic government, once a close ally of Modi's BJP.
Sarma has warned that "the indigenous people" in border districts "live in an atmosphere of insecurity due to the recent developments in Bangladesh".
Agence France-Presse
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Dubai Eye
9 hours ago
- Dubai Eye
Syrian minister met Israel's Dermer for talks on regional stability
Syria's foreign minister met Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in Paris on Tuesday to discuss security arrangements in southern Syria, two Syrian sources familiar with the meeting said. Syrian and Israeli officials have been conducting U.S.-mediated talks on de-escalating conflict in southern Syria. A previous round of these talks was held in Paris in late July but ended without a final accord. Syrian state news agency SANA said Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani met with an Israeli delegation on Tuesday, but did not mention Dermer. The agency said the discussions focused on de-escalation, non-interference in Syrian domestic affairs and reactivating a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a U.N. buffer zone in the Golan Heights. There was no public comment by the Israeli government on the meeting. A Syrian security source familiar with the meeting said Shibani and Dermer met for several hours, along with their respective teams. The source said Shibani emphasized that Israel's ongoing interventions in southern Syria, including incursions into the provinces of Quneitra and Deraa, risked further destabilizing the region. The two sides agreed to continue talks focused on security coordination in southern Syria, the source said. Another Syrian source familiar with the meeting said Israel had again raised establishing a "humanitarian corridor" to send aid directly into Sweida, a Druze-majority province in Syria's south that saw days of sectarian violence last month. Syria had previously rejected this idea but Israel raised it again, the source said. Hundreds of people were reported killed in the clashes in Sweida province between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes and government forces. Israel intervened with airstrikes to prevent what it said was mass killings of Druze by government forces. The clashes last month underlined the challenges interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa faces in stabilising Syria and maintaining centralised rule, despite warming ties with the U.S. and his administration's evolving security contacts with Israel.
Khaleej Times
12 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
India proposes law to sack ministers facing criminal charges
India's government introduced a bill on Wednesday to remove top politicians if they are arrested and detained for 30 days, which opponents called a "chilling" bid to crush constitutional safeguards. Several of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's opponents have faced criminal investigation or trial in recent years, including two state chief ministers last year. They include Arvind Kejriwal, then chief minister of the capital Delhi, who spent several months in jail on accusations that his administration received kickbacks from the allocation of liquor licenses. He denied any wrongdoing and characterised the charges as a political witch hunt by Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Jharkhand state Chief Minister Hemant Soren, also from the opposition, was arrested and jailed on corruption charges in February 2024, accusations he also denies. Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, who introduced the bill, said the government wanted the "value of ethics to increase". The bill would force politicians out of a ministerial post if they were detained for a month and accused of an offence that carries a jail term of five years or more. India's Association of Democratic Reforms, an organisation working on electoral reform, calculated that almost half of the 543 elected national lawmakers had criminal cases against them. Of those 215 cases, 170 faced serious charges -- including rape, murder, attempt to murder, and kidnapping. "We cannot be so shameless that we face accusations and still remain in a constitutional position," Shah told parliament. However, John Brittas of the Communist Party of India-Marxist warned that "in an era marked by vindictive politics, where central agencies are deployed against opposition leaders, the provisions will be misused for ulterior motives". West Bengal state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called the bill a "chilling attempt to establish a rule where judicial scrutiny is silenced, constitutional safeguards are dismantled, and the people's rights are trampled". "This draconian step comes as a death knell for democracy and federalism in India," said Banerjee, who is also from an opposition party. US think tank Freedom House said last year that Modi's BJP had "increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents".
Khaleej Times
a day ago
- Khaleej Times
S&P affirms 'AA+' credit rating for US, cites impact of tariff revenue
S&P Global on Monday affirmed its "AA+" credit rating on the US, saying the revenue from President Donald Trump's tariffs will offset the fiscal hit from his massive tax-cut and spending bill. Trump signed the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" into law in July after it was passed by the Republican-controlled Congress. The bill, which delivered new tax breaks, also made Trump's 2017 tax cuts permanent. "Amid the rise in effective tariff rates, we expect meaningful tariff revenue to generally offset weaker fiscal outcomes that might otherwise be associated with the recent fiscal legislation, which contains both cuts and increases in tax and spending," S&P said in a statement. "At this time, it appears that meaningful tariff revenue has the potential to offset the deficit-raising aspects of the recent budget legislation." The U.S. reported a $21 billion jump in customs duty collections from Trump's tariffs in July, but the government budget deficit still grew nearly 20% in the same month to $291 billion. Interest on the public debt also continued to grow, hitting $1.013 trillion in the first 10 months of the fiscal year, an increase of 6%, or $57 billion, over the prior-year period due to slightly higher interest rates and increased debt levels. Since returning to power in January this year, Trump has launched a global trade war with a range of tariffs that have targeted individual products and countries. The Republican president has set a baseline tariff of 10% on all imports to the U.S., as well as additional duties on some items and trading partners. IMPACT OF TARIFFS S&P, which became the first ratings agency to cut the pristine U.S. government rating in 2011, said the outlook on the U.S. rating remains stable. The ratings agency said it expects the Federal Reserve, which Trump has criticized this year for not cutting interest rates, "to navigate the challenges of lowering domestic inflation and addressing financial market vulnerabilities." It projected the country's general government deficit to average 6.0% of GDP during the 2025-2028 period, down from 7.5% in 2024 and from an average 9.8% of GDP in 2020-2023. S&P said it could lower the rating over the next two to three years if already high deficits increase. "The ratings could also come under pressure if political developments weigh on the strength of American institutions and the effectiveness of long-term policymaking or independence of the Federal Reserve," it said. SP, however, said it could raise the U.S. rating in the event of sustained economic growth and adjustments to the U.S. fiscal profile that would diminish recent increases in the country's debt burden. There was no reaction in markets on Tuesday to SP's credit rating affirmation, which follows a U.S. sovereign credit downgrade by Moody's in May, when that ratings agency cut the triple-A U.S. rating by one notch, citing rising debt levels. The U.S. national debt load surged above a record $37 trillion last week. James Ragan, co-chief investment officer and director of investment management research at D.A. Davidson, said the SP rating affirmation was an acknowledgment of the meaningful tariff revenue generated so far. "That's all good revenue (coming) in, but that's also a drag on the economy, so I think we don't know the impact of that going forward," he said.
