The Union Ministry for Railways headed by Nitish Kumar could not, for example, have had just national interest in mind when it sent a few train loads of Biharis from Bihar to Assam. Not to a state, the capital of which alone has an estimated 1.5 lakh Biharis, who eke out a living as construction workers, rickshaw pullers, porters and the like, not the best of professions. Not when Tinsukia, Assam and the entire North-east's main mandi for all purposes, is dominated by lakhs of domiciled, third-generation Biharis many of whom form a part of the state's unemployed.

The refrain is similar among most domiciled Biharis in the state. In Guwahati alone their population would exceed a lakh. As an employee of the more bankrupt Public Health Engineering Department (PHE) at Chandmari on the busy RG Barooah Road, Yadav is part of Assam's oversized government workforce, that has for years now, got paid in installments, once in every three months, when they're lucky. Assam's government school teachers at one stage didn't get paid for years at a stretch.

Two Bihari persons and a two-year old child who were injured in the ongoing clashes between the Assamese and Bihari communities in the state succumbed to their injuries late last night in Bongaigaon. There was, however, no report of loss of lives from any part of the state in the past 20 hours or so till the filing of this report. With the deaths last night in Bongaigaon, the toll in the present clashes mounted to 41. Bihari passengers of the Brahmaputra mail was attacked in Gaghrapar in lower Assam last night, though the figures people injured in the incident were not available.

Twenty more persons of the Bihari community were killed in violent incidents reported from the various parts of the state, bringing the death toll in the ongoing clash between the Assamese and Bihari communities to 27 this evening. According to reports received here late tonight from lower Assam, two Bihari persons were gunned down by suspected United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) militants in Nalbari, while three others were killed in Fakiragram. Six members of a Bihari family were meanwhile killed in Tingkhong in upper Assam.

Two persons were killed in the state in the past 12 hours, even as the army conducted flag marches in Tinsukia and Duliajan in Upper Assam to bring under control the continuing violence between the Assamese and Bihari communities. Speaking to newspersons, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said here today that deputy commissioners, along with superintendents of police, would be held responsible and action taken against them should there be reports of further violence from the districts.

A Bihari businessman, identified as Vijayraj Tatre, was shot dead by suspected ULFA militants, sources here said, while a worker in a tailor\\'s shop in Doomdooma in Upper Assam was injured in a grenade attack in what is believed to be part of the retaliatory strikes against the Bihari community in the state for the violence meted out recently to train passengers of the North-east in Bihar. Tatre\\'s son and the Bihari tailor also sustained injuries in the two attacks.

Thousands of people gathered at the Don Bosco School grounds here in Imphal today to bid farewell to Minister for General Administration and Elections Francis Ngajokpa\\'s daughter, eight-year-old Lungnila Elizabeth, whose decomposed body was recovered yesterday, after she was kidnapped on November 4 from outside her school. A few arrests had meanwhile been made in connection with the murder, sources said, even as the state government announced that the case would be cracked within a couple of days. Details of those reportedly arrested were, however, not immediately known.

Fearing possible infiltration by North-east based Islamic militants who have received training in neighbouring Bangladesh, the Cachar district administration in South Assam has clamped a two-month embargo on people\\'s movement, and trade, along the Indo-Bangla border. The local administration has clamped Section 144 of the CrPC restricting the movement of people in the area between 8 pm and 5 am. The ban includes fishing boats which will now be prevented from plying in the Surma river during the stipulated hours.

In a significant move, seen as one that has been made primarily to pre-empt a split in the Congress party in Manipur, Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh today sacked three ministers for indulging in \\"anti-party activities\\".