Amit Shah cancels visit to Meghalaya, Arunachal amid Citizenship Act protests

NEW DELHI: Amid continued unrest in the Northeast over the Citizenship Amendment Act, Union Home minister Amit Shah has cancelled his visit to Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, scheduled on Sunday and Monday. 

A senior home ministry official confirmed the development but refused to disclose the reasons for cancellation of the trip.

On Sunday, Shah was supposed to take part in the passing out parade at the North Eastern Police Academy near Shillong, which is now under indefinite curfew. Shah was scheduled to visit a festival in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang. 

‘Muslims will be forced to convert’

Muslim leaders on Friday said the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) may force Muslims to convert. Prominent Muslim bodies like Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) and members of the civil society also said they feel let down by some “secular political parties” who had assured to not support the “divisive” Bill but voted in favour.

Responding to a question, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind vice-president Salim Engineer said, “Conversion cannot be ruled out. This law has to be seen together with NRC.

When a lot of genuine citizens won’t have documents to get through NRC, as we saw in Assam, everybody except Muslims will manage to escape that because of CAA.

At that time, a lot of Muslims may think they too would have escaped the trauma if they were non-Muslims because of CAA.” 

Navaid Hamid, president of AIMMM said, “There are different dimensions of the hidden agenda of Sangh parivar,  they wish to exploit every option to create confusion among the citizens and a false illusion amongst their votebank.”