GUWAHATI: The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which is a constituent of Assam’s BJP-led three-party ruling coalition, has threatened to pull out its support to the Sarbananda Sonowal government in the event of the passage of Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
The Bill seeks to grant citizenship to the non-Muslim immigrants of Bangladesh besides Pakistan and Afghanistan, who migrated to India till December 31, 2014. Currently, a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) is holding public hearings in Assam on the Bill.
“The AGP will keep fighting opposing the Bill. And if it is passed, the party will withdraw its support to the government,” AGP MLA, Ramendra Narayan Kalita, told reporters on Tuesday.
“The AGP is with the people of Assam and it will not compromise on the Bill. From May 12-30, AGP will carry out a mass signature campaign. It will agitate against the Bill across constituencies,” AGP leader Kamala Kalita said.
For a party that was born out of the six-year-long bloody anti-foreigners’ agitation of early 1980s spearheaded by the All Assam Students’ Union, the AGP’s threat of pulling out support to the government is being seen as moving with time. For some time, the critics of the regional party have been asking it to prove its sincerity by pulling out of the government before the Bill’s passage.
The anti-foreigners’ agitation, which was spearheaded by All Assam Students’ Union, had culminated in the signing of the historic Assam Accord by the then Rajiv Gandhi government at the Centre in 1985. As per the Accord, the immigrants, who came to Assam after March 24, 1971, have to be detected and deported. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is being updated by the state government based on that cut-off date.
Meanwhile, during a public hearing conducted by the JPC in Guwahati on Monday, over 100 organisations besides intellectuals, journalists, activists and educationists strongly spoke against the Centre’s move to pass the Bill. They fear that the ethnic identity of the locals will be destroyed by the Bill’s passage.
The views of groups and organisations, besides political parties, in Bengali-dominated Barak Valley, which comprises three of Assam’s 33 districts, are just the opposite. Politicians here, cutting across party lines and going against party stand, are endorsing the Bill. During a JPC-conducted public hearing in the valley on Tuesday, various organisations and political parties categorically stated that they were in favour of the Bill.
The BJP views the non-Muslim immigrants as refugees and the Muslim immigrants as aggressors. The party says the non-Muslim immigrants were the victims of Partition and they fled Bangladesh in the face of religious persecution. Ironically, it is the same BJP which, in its Vision Document ahead of the 2016 Assam polls, had promised to rid the state of the illegal immigrants.
The Congress asked the BJP not to divide the immigrants on religious lines. “An immigrant is an immigrant. The BJP should apply the same yardstick while dealing with the immigrants of any community,” the Congress insisted.