Guwahati: Former Assam chief minister and AGP leader Prafulla Kumar Mahanta on Tuesday said the regional party would be forced to pull out of the BJP-led government in Assam if the Centre goes ahead with the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which seeks to grant citizenship to Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh.

"If the Centre goes ahead to pass the bill in Parliament, the AGP will be left with no other option but to pull out of the state government," Mahanta told reporters here.

The bill has been a bone of contention between the BJP and its coalition partner, the AGP in Assam, which are at opposite poles on this issue.

The bill was introduced by Union home minister Rajnath Singh in Parliament in 2016. It seeks to give citizenship by naturalisation to immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan belonging to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who faced religious persecution and came to India before December 31, 2014.

The bill is currently before a joint select committee of Parliament. Granting citizenship to Bangladeshi Hindus is a pre-poll commitment of the BJP, but the AGP is vehemently opposing it.

"The indigenous people of Assam will become minorities in their own land if citizenship is granted to Hindu migrants from Bangladesh. It will threaten the social, cultural and linguistic identities of the indigenous communities," Mahanta said.

On the National Register of Citizens (NRC), he said the register should be updated as per the Supreme Court order and the Assam Accord. "Any delay in the NRC update will give a chance to the vested interests to derail the process."

The Union home ministry had filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court last Thursday, urging it to postpone the date of publication of the draft NRC to July 31, 2018, instead of the December 31, 2017 date set by the court.

Mahanta wants the draft to be published before the expiry of the Supreme Court deadline. He demanded that the Centre make the framework agreement signed between Delhi and the NSCN (I-M) public to clear all misgivings.

The Centre and the NSCN (I-M) are negotiating a solution to the Naga problem since 1997 and the two sides signed the framework agreement on August 3, 2015.

"We will not accept any compromise on territorial integrity of Assam," Mahanta said.

Creation of Nagalim by integrating the Naga-inhabited areas of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh with Nagaland is one of the main demands of the NSCN (I-M).