Assam: Several students’ organisations in the northeastern states staged demonstration in all the state capitals of the region, reiterating their demand to scrap the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). They also demanded that the Inner Line Permit (ILP) system be introduced in the entire region.
President of North East Students Union (NESO) Samuel Jyrwa said, “We have been firm in our stand that CAA is against the interests of Assam and other states in the region. But despite our earlier protests, the Centre went ahead and enacted the legislation.”
He added, “We will organize non-violent sit-in demonstrations in all state capitals of the region against CAA and other issues such as the promulgation of inner-line permit regime in Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura states that have borne the maximum brunt of illegal immigrations.” Protest comes in the backdrop of Union home minister Amit Shah’s remarks earlier this month, during an interaction with a BJP delegation from West Bengal that CAA will be implemented once Covid-19 vaccinations are over in India.
Furthermore, the protest also covers issues like influx of migrants, complete scrapping of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), providing constitutional safeguards to the indigenous communities, implementation of Inner Line Permit (ILP) across all North Eastern states, along with the elimination of the operations of fundamentalist groups existing in the region. All Assam Students’ Union chief advisor Samujjal Bhattacharya said, “People of the Northeast have not accepted the CAA and will never accept it. This act will reduce the indigenous people into a minority.
The Northeast can’t be used as a dumping ground for illegal migrants. Assam has already taken a lot of burden by accepting the migrants till 24 March 1971 and cannot accept more such migrants,” Bhattacharjya told reporters in Guwahati.
Delhi-based lawyer Gautam Bhatia says that by dividing alleged migrants into Muslims and non-Muslims, the bill “explicitly and blatantly seeks to enshrine religious discrimination into law, contrary to our long-standing, secular constitutional ethos”. Historian Mukul Kesavan says the bill is “couched in the language of refuge and seemingly directed at foreigners, but its main purpose is the delegitimisation of Muslims’ citizenship”. Web Desk
