Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday said that his government would “break the backbone” of “Miyas” in the state if the Bharatiya Janata Party returns to power in the Assembly elections, PTI reported.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Dhakuakhana of Lakhimpur district, Sarma said that his government had worked for the “indigenous people of the state”.

“And those who came from Bangladesh and encroached on Assam’s land and homes, we broke their hands and legs politically,” PTI quoted the chief minister as saying.

He added: “This time, we will break the very backbone of the Bangladeshi Miyas, so that they cannot dare the Assamese people.”

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.

In the past months, Sarma has made a series of remarks targeting Miyas, including claiming that it was his job to “make them suffer” and saying that he had directed BJP workers to file applications seeking to strike the names of Miya Muslims off the electoral rolls.

On February 26, the Gauhati High Court sought a response from Himanta Biswa Sarma on petitions seeking action against him for alleged hate speech against Muslims.

Earlier in February, the Supreme Court had declined to entertain petitions seeking registration of a first information report against him on similar allegations.

During the poll campaign on Friday, Sarma also said that his government had cleared 1.5 lakh bighas of encroached land from Miyas in the past five years, PTI reported.

Since the BJP came to power in Assam in 2016, multiple demolition drives have been conducted in the state, mostly targeting areas populated by Bengali-speaking Muslims.

Assembly elections in Assam will be held on April 9 and the results will be declared on May 4.

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