Students protest in front of Cotton University in Guwahati on Thursday
Hundreds of people protested on Saturday in Assam against the Centre's proposed move to grant citizenship rights to persecuted religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
AGP leaders, who started the signature campaign in Guwahati, said that they are planning to collect as many as 50 lakh signatures from across the state before sending it to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) which is reviewing the bill.
A senior state official who did not want to be named said the government has received more than 45,000 emails protesting the move to grant citizenship to "Hindu Bangladeshis", adding that if the Bill is passed, it could lead to "chaos". The exercise, which was launched in 2016, will bring out the names of illegal foreigners living in the state.
The new bill breaches the clauses of Assam Accord which stated that all illegal foreigners who came to the state after 1971 from Bangladesh, irrespective of their religion, have to be deported. The general secretary of the influential students' body also warned of large scale agitation across the state if the Centre goes ahead with the Bill. They said there can not be any change to the cut-off date - March 25, 1971 - and those who came later have to be deported, a demand that has kept the pot simmering for close to three decades now.
"There is a strong opposition to the proposed bill and during the hearing admitted that during the hearing various stakeholders, everyone opposed the amendment bill", Congress Rajya Sabha member Bhubaneswar Kalita said.
Stating that the Bill is "dangerous" for a small state like Meghalaya, Deputy Chief Minister P Tynsong said it does not benefit the people of Meghalaya in any way. Assamese people have become a minority in several districts of Assam.
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The North East Students Organisation (NESO), in a petition to the committee, said the people of the region should be provided with "constitutional safeguards".
But pressure is building up on them to withdraw from the alliance. "People want we should quit the government", said Mahanta.
"The Bill is another effort to encourage infiltration of the Hindus from Bangladesh into the different states of the region".
Stating that the Bill would defeat the objective of signing the Assam Accord where March 25, 1971 was fixed as the cut off year for detection and deportation of foreigners from Assam, the NESO said, "In totality, we oppose the bill and demand that Inner Line Permit system be introduced for the entire North-eastern region". "The migrants should be distributed across India and Assam should not be made to bear their burden", he said.
Critics of the Bill say that it violates secularism enshrined in the Indian Constitution. "Moreover, the refugees don't just include Hindus, They include indigenous groups such as Koch Rajbongshis, Bodos and so on", said Ranjit Kumar Dass, BJP state president. "That the state will be flooded with Bangladeshi Hindus is a bloated argument by ethno-centric Assamese groups". On the question of the Bill creating a divide, he is dismissive: "Organisations with no mandate are making a lot of noise".
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