Centre sets up expert committee to examine demand for Bodoland

NEW DELHI: Days after Parliament approved creation of Telangana, the government has set up an expert committee to study and examine the demand of a separate Bodoland state to be carved out of Assam.

The one-man expert committee of former Union Home Secretary G K Pillai will consult all sections of the society on the viability of a separate state of Bodoland and submit its report within nine months.

This is for the first time the central government has set up such a committee to examine the demand of Bodoland.

After the government's decision to carve Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh, several Bodo outfits have intensified their agitation to press for their demand of a separate state for Bodo tribals, mostly living in a few districts on the northern bank of the Brahmaputra river in Assam.

The government set up an autonomous Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) in 2003 by signing an accord after years of violent agitations that claimed hundreds of lives.

The BTC area had witnessed ethnic clashes between Bodo tribals and immigrant Muslims in 2012 that killed more than a hundred people.