[17][18] The All Assam Students Union (AASU) demanded that the elections be postponed until the names of 'foreign nationals' were deleted from the electoral rolls.

[19] The central government attempted to placate the Assamese by agreeing to proscribe any migrants who entered the state after March 1971 from voting, and proceeded with the elections.

The Assamese, demanding an earlier cutoff date, were inimical to the government's decision, as were the Lalung (Tiwa) tribals who resented the proliferation of Bengali immigrants onto their land.

[20] The ethnic clash that took place in Nellie was seen as a fallout of the decision to hold the controversial Assembly elections in 1983 (boycotted by the AASU) despite stiff opposition from several elements in the state.

400 companies of Central Paramilitary Force and 11 brigades of the Indian Army were deployed to guard Assam while the polls were scheduled to take place in phases.

The Tiwas assembled ''"to avenge the killings and recover their girls"''..[21] On 13 February, the immigrant Bengali muslims had also attacked a Bihari village in that area.

This quote attributed to Vajpayee was presented by former CPI-M MP Indrajit Gupta during a trust vote debate in May 1996, and it went unchallenged in the Lok Sabha.

Many survivors recall that the local police tried convincing the CRPF battalion that there was no violence in the area; the smoke emitted was due to burning of agricultural waste rather than houses.

The survivors also recalled that the local police diverted the battalion to patrol the national highway suggesting that no road lead to the area from where the smoke rose.