guwahati assam finance minister himanta biswa sarma on saturday said the sole purpose of redrawing the boundaries of assembly and lok sabha constituencies in the state should be to protect the political rights of the native assamese people by creating more seats in which majority of voters would be from indigenous groups the state governments stand on the nature of the delimitation is likely to play a significant role in allaying the fears of indigenous assamese people that the citizenship amendment act caa might turn them into a minority in their own homeland the caa offers citizenship to nonmuslims from bangladesh pakistan and afghanistan on grounds of religious persecutiononly if a constituency is delimited in the interest of the indigenous people of assam the native assamese can exist for the next 50 years of the 126 assembly constituencies at least 110 should be kept for the indigenous people we do not want any increase in the number of constituencies that wont help us sarma saidmuslim voters in assam account for about 37 of the states electorate in the 2016 elections 28 muslim candidates had won the polls of them 14 are from congress 13 from aiudf and one from bjp muslims voters also influence election results in six of the 14 lok sabha constituencies and bjp wants a complete overhauling of the electorate demography in these constituencies as well these six constituencies are barpeta dhubri nagaon kaliabor karimganj and silcharmany people think if the seats are reserved then it would provide the desired safeguards to the natives but if a seat is reserved without altering the boundary then the demography of the voters will remain unchanged if the voters in a reserved seat happen to be supporters of ajmal aiudf chief then the elected mla will have to follow ajmals orders and we are back to square one the minister addedin the past sarma and other bjp leaders would often caution people that ajmal would very soon become the chief minister of assam if the influx of muslims from bangladesh continues unabatedsarma further said if a constituency is turned into an indigenousmajority one by redrawing the boundaries then we will have indigenous voters as well as an indigenous mla this is the only way to secure the existence of indigenous communities of assamsarmas statement comes a day after president ram nath kovind cleared the decks for resumption of the delimitation exercise in assam the exercise was put on hold in 2008 as the situation in the state was reported to be unsuitable owing to a threat to peace and public orderbefore the exercise was suspended the delimitation commission had already prepared the draft proposal of the new boundaries for the assembly and lok saba constituencies on the basis of the 2001 census the present delimitation exercise will be done according to the 2011 censusaccording to the old draft the number of assembly seats reserved for sts has been increased from 16 to 19 and those for scs from eight to