2022 saw end of tribal insurgency in Assam: CM Himanta Biswa Sarma

The year 2022 saw the end of the tribal insurgency in Assam, said Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday.

During the year 2022, 757 arms, 5983 assorted ammunitions, 131 grenades, 26 IEDs, 52 kg explosives were recovered and most of them have been recovered from NDFB, NLFT, Karbi, Dimasa, and Adivasi insurgents.

Of the total recovery of arms in 2022, a majority of them were voluntarily deposited, CM Sarma told reporters on the very first day of 2023.

"We recovered the highest number of arms in Assam history. Recovering 757 numbers arms in just one year is a signal of the end of the tribal insurgency in Assam," he said.

Assam has had experienced bloodshed since the 1980s.

The government signed several peace agreements with various tribal insurgent groups in 2022.

Only ULFA (I) is now underground, however, their activities have drastically declined over the years.

Sarma, after becoming the CM in 2021, on several occasions appealed to ULFA(I) supremo Paresh Baruah to come to the mainstream of society and respond to peace processes initiated by the government, while emphasizing the need to resolve all the outstanding issues through dialogue.

Notably, in a major step taken after decades, the Centre in 2022 reduced disturbed areas under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from a large part of Assam.

The government had said that the move was taken after a review of the law and order and security scenario in Assam in the recent past which indicates that the situation has considerably improved in many districts of the state and the presence of extremist elements are confined to only in certain parts of the State.

AFSPA, which empowers security forces to conduct operations anywhere and arrest anyone without any prior warrant, was in force in the whole of Assam since 1990.