The BJP has opposed the 12-hour Assam bandh, called by 46 organisations on Tuesday against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, claiming it to be “politically motivated”.
State BJP president Ranjeet Kumar Dass in a statement on Saturday said a bandh cannot solve any problem and urged the people and organisations not to support it.
Altogether 46 organisations, including Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP), have called the bandh to oppose the Centre’s move to pass the bill in the winter session of Parliament.
The statement said certain political forces, that are using “illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh as vote bank”, are spreading false information that the BJP is trying to settle “around two crore Hindu migrants from Bangladesh” in Assam.
Dass said the BJP has always been highlighting the dangers posed to the people of the state by “unabated influx from Bangladesh” and the protests against the bill is an attempt by the “forces sympathetic to these Muslim migrants” to divert the people’s attention.
The bill to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955, was introduced in Lok Sabha in 2016 and subsequently referred to the JPC of both Houses for examination and presenting a report to Parliament.
The bill proposes to grant citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Buddhists who came to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh before December 31, 2014.
In a related development, an AGP delegation led by party president and Assam agriculture minister Atul Bora, met the JPC chairman Rajendra Agrawal at his Shastri Nagar residence in Meerut on Saturday and submitted a memorandum stating the bill, which proposes to grant citizenship to Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, will not only endanger the language and culture of the indigenous people but also threaten their very existence.
The JPC will take oral evidence of the home, law and justice and external affairs ministries on the bill on Tuesday and the AGP will hold a protest rally here on the same day. The organisations, which have called the bandh, have exempted the AGP rally from its purview.
