Forty Years Ago: December 25, 1980

HM’s Assam offer

Home Minister Zail Singh announced his invitation “without condition” to leaders of the Assam agitation to discuss the foreign nationals issue, which has disturbed the state for to long. He wanted the other side also not to put any conditions. ‘‘Let them come and we will talk,” he told the Rajya Sabha and welcomed Opposition members’ help in the matter. Zail Singh’s invitation came half an hour after the House had heatedly debated a calling-attention motion of A K Sharma (Ind) and others for nearly two hours. The critics of the government had felt frustrated in their attempt to get assurances on several points Including an end to “repression’’ by the Central Reserve Police force and resumption of talks.

BJP economic vision

An economic system with a large measure of decentralisation, emphasis on distributive justice and ln-built checks to prevent exploitation and the growth of monopolies has been envisaged In the draft economic policy statement of the Bharatiya Janata Party for its forthcoming session at Bombay. The draft economic policy statement has been prepared by a nine-man committee appointed by the party president, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, with Kanwarlal Gupta as convener. The statement has dwelt at length on the burning issues of the national economic scene — hyper-inflation, low rate of economic growth, rising volume of unemployment, increase in the percentage of population below the poverty line, and gross inequalities.

Cold wave

Part of northern India was in the grip of a cold wave as heavy snowfall in the hills and intermittent rain in plains continued for the second day. The night-long heavy snowfall blocked traffic on the Jammu-Srinagar highway. Indian Airlines could operate only one service to Srinagar because of bad weather.