There are reports that the present Uttarakhand government led by the BJP may bring the legislation for making Bengali language necessary in the school curriculum in the Himalayan state.
This decision of the ruling political dispensation as being given to understand from various posts going viral in social media has disturbed the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal and other opposition parties of the state as if this decision is really implemented and bill brought in the state assembly then the illegally migrated Bangladeshis in Uttarakhand will get authenticity for their permanent stay say the political activists of UKD not ready to reveal their names.
According to a post by Arjun Singh Negi UKD in Hindi in social media :
Uttarakhand, Rudrapur MLA Shiv Arora can bring a bill to teach Bengali in Uttarakhand schools. The Uttarakhand government can pass a proposal in the assembly to give Scheduled Tribe status to 3 lakh people who came from East Pakistan!
Now what will happen to you hill people, what will happen to your dialect, language and culture???? Asked the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal activist Negi in his FB post.
It may be recalled that the former chief minister of Uttarakhand when he was CM and MLA from Sitarganj constituency which has majority of Bengali voters had publicly said in a television interview in order to appease the Bengali electorates that Bahuguna community has migrated from West Bengal to Garhwal, Uttarakhand several decades ago when their ancestors visited the spiritual destinations Badrinath Kedarnath and continued staying here since then instead of returning back to their parent state West Bengal.
Hence they are not Garhwalies but originally Bengalies. Late Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, the former Uttarakhand CM and union minister in various central ministries who had been MP from Pauri Garhwal also used to say that they had migrated from West Bengal centuries ago and were Bhatacharyas earlier converted as Bahugunas, originally settling in Bugani village, in Pauri Garhwal district.
Today Saurabh Bahuguna , Bahuguna’s grandson and son of former chief minister of Uttarakhand Vijay Bahuguna is the MLA from Sitarganj and a cabinet minister in Uttarakhand government.
The former union state minister of defence and tourism Ajay Bhatt , presently Almora MP has also been extremely favorable to this issue of Bengalies. He too has demanded the Scheduled tribe status for over one lakh sixty thousand or more Bengalies living in Uttarakhand.
Ajay Bhatt had raised the issue of granting Scheduled tribe status to over 1.60 lakh Bengalies living in Uttarakhand in Parliament in 2019 and emphatically favoured this demand from various forums thereafter too. The state government too had earlier sent this recommendation of granting ST status to all Bengalies in Uttarakhand , however nothing has been heard in this respect so far.
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