Citizenship Bill crisis over: BJP leader

A top BJP leader on Sunday said the crisis over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in the North-East is over as it is unlikely to be passed by the Rajya Sabha and hailed Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma for opposing the contentious Bill. In a statement issued here on Sunday, Haythung Bill Lotha, National Secretary of the ST Morcha of the BJP, said that Sangma is a "unanimously and overwhemingly iconic North-East hero" for having opposed the Citizenship Amendment Bill.

Assam and the Northeast have been on the boil since the Lok Sabha passed the Bill on January 8 introducing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that proposes to give citizenship to people belonging to six minority communities - Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians - from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, facing religious persecution. Muslim refugees are not covered by the Bill.

The Bill's opponents are challenging it on the grounds that it violates the Assam Accord of 1985. The Assam Accord was signed on August 15, 1985, between the then government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the Assam government and the All Assam Students Union (AASU) that spearheaded a six-year-long non-violent student-led protest movement against illegal migration of hundreds of thousands of people from across the border in Bangladesh.

According to the accord, only those who came to Assam till March 24, 1971, will be accepted as Indian citizens. The operative part of Clause 5 of the Assam Accord states: "Foreigners who came to Assam on or after March 25, 1971, shall continue to be detected, deleted and expelled in accordance with law. Immediate and practical steps shall be taken to expel such foreigners." This means all illegal migrants irrespective of religion will be detected, deleted from voters list and expelled.

However, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, brought in by the Modi government, seeks to make an exception to this by bringing in religion to give refuge illegal infiltrators. According to the Bill, people belonging to the minority communities - namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians - from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, facing religious persecution, will be given citizenship in India. Muslims refugees are not covered in the ambit of the bill and are not welcome.

Under the Citizenship Act 1955, one of the requirements for citizenship by naturalisation is that the applicant must have resided in India during the last 12 months and for 11 of the previous 14 years. The new Bill relaxes this 11-year requirement to six years for persons belonging to the same six religions and three countries. According to the new Bill, the cutoff date for people belonging to these religions residing illegally in India is December 31, 2014. This basically impinges into the cutoff date of March 24,1971, under Clause 5 of the Assam Accord, which is not based on any religion.

Opponents of the Bill say that the ruling BJP is seeking to create a "vote bank" among Bengali Hindus who have illegally come into Assam from Bangladesh post-1971. This, the opponents say, has the potential to make demographic changes in the state, thereby threatening the identity and culture of the indigenous Assamese people of the state. The ruling BJP, however, claims that the Bill will give refuge to only around 800,000 people barely making any impact on the demography of the state.

In his statement on Sunday, Lotha said that Sangma chaired a meeting of 11 political parties to oppose the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill on January 29. Following this, Sangma and Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga led a seven-member BJP-allied Northeast Democratic Alliance delegation to New Delhi that met President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh among other Central leaders "for strongly urging and reasoning with them to reconsider the BJP's position on the Bill".

Meanwhile, BJP ally Janata Dal (United) has also opposed the Bill with a delegation of the party meeting those opposed to the Bill in Assam in the last week of January. "The good news is currently BJP-led NDA government has not officially listed the CAB Bill in the Rajya Sabha Agenda List in this current session," Lotha said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)