Guwahati, Dec. 12: Former Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and former AGP MP Kumar Dipak Das met President Pranab Mukherjee this morning to put pressure on the Centre to scrap the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, while Union minister of state for railways Rajen Gohain said here that the ruling party was expecting its passage in the budget session slated for January-end.

Mahanta told Mukherjee that the bill that seeks to provide citizenship to foreigners based on their religion was "unconstitutional" and would make Assam's vexed foreigners' problem more complicated.

"March 24, 1971 was accepted by all quarters for detection and deportation of foreigners in Assam irrespective of caste and religion. But the BJP's move is against the provision. When the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is being updated in Assam based on that cut-off date, this bill has created confusion and question mark over the entire issue of solving the foreigners problem in the state,"Mahanta told The Telegraph over phone from New Delhi.

"The President said he would forward our memorandum to the government," he added.

Mahanta met L.K. Advani in the evening on the issue.

The draft bill seeks to help persecuted Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to get citizenship after a stay of six years. But groups representing indigenous communities are opposed to the bill saying it would reduce them to minorities and threaten their identity, culture and language in their own state.

The Centre referred the bill to a joint parliamentary committee after Opposition parties protested when it was introduced in Parliament in August.

Mahanta is leading the protest under the banner of Asom Andolan Sangrami Mancha, an umbrella body of political and non-political organisations opposed to the bill. On Saturday, Mahanta and members of the Mancha staged a demonstration at Jantar Mantar and met two Left leaders, Sitaram Yechuri and D. Raja, seeking their support to oppose the bill in Parliament.

Gohain told reporters at the NF Railway headquarters that the bill seeks to grant citizenship to those from whom there was no threat to the country. "There is no threat from the Hindus as India is a Hindu-majority country and they should be accepted," Gohain, an MP from central Assam's Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency, said.

On the question of the threat posed to Assamese language from the Hindu Bengalis to be accepted as citizens, Gohain said, "Those who want# to embrace Assamese language and culture should be accepted. Assamese should be the only official language and I will tell chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal that there can't be two official languages in a state," Gohain said.

Assamese is the official language in the state except in the Barak Valley, where Bengali is accorded priority.