Tinsukia: Hundreds of activists from Asom Jatiyatavadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) on Friday organised a mass protest rally on GNB Road in upper Assam’s Tinsukia district against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) that is soon to be tabled in Parliament’s Winter Session.
The protesters marched from their district office to a school which is just 300 m away, shouting slogans against the contentious bill for almost for an hour before terminating it back in their office.
Speaking with EastMojo on the sidelines of the protest march, AJYCP district president Surojit Moran said that Assam is not a dumping ground for illegal Bangladeshis and illegal migrants should be differentiated on the basis of religion that will violate the very idea of ‘secularism’ existing in the country.
“The amendment act will open a floodgate of migration of Hindu Bengali population from neighbouring Bangladesh into Assam, and the legal influx of new refugees will have serious repercussion on the socio-economic fabric of the state,” Moran said.
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Moran further stated that the youth organisation through the protest march is placing a demand before the government to scrap the contentious bill immediately and if the government moves ahead with it, AGYCP is ready to go to any extent of protest.
The Assam Agitation (1979-85) had compelled the government to sign the historic Assam Accord, paving the way to detect and deport all illegal migrants who came to Assam on or after March 25, 1971.
However, the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, introduced on July 19, 2016, in Lok Sabha, seeks migrants from certain minority communities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to be considered eligible for Indian citizenship.
Fearing government’s adamancy to enact the bill into a law, wide-spread protests spread out in the Northeast, particularly, Assam during the last Winter Session of Parliament. The bill got lapsed after the Union government did not present it in the Rajya Sabha for reasons best known to the government, ending months of protest in Northeast.
