GUWAHATI: Police have resorted to blank firing in several parts of Assam’s Brahmaputra Valley including Guwahati city and Tinsukia town to control large numbers of anti-CAB protestors mostly students and youths on Wednesday.
Police firing in the air to disperse large number protestors who gathered along the G S Road stretch from Ganeshguri till in front of the capital complex while similar action was taken by police near the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Tinsukia.
Police resorted to cane charging on the G S Road near Christianbasti to disperse a group of students’ protestors. There were reports of clashes between protestors and police in many parts of eastern Assam districts in Brahmaputra Valley.
The agitators shut down business establishments in many parts of the city while all the education institutions were rendered non-functional midway.
Meanwhile, Assam Finance and PWD minister, Dr Himanta Biswa Sharma while addressing a meeting of BJP workers in Kalakshetra here on Wednesday stated that the protests against CAB were incited by vested forces and political parties who had hatched design to reduce Hindu community including Assamese and Bengali-speaking Hindus to a minority so that Bengali-Speaking Muslims of Bangladesh origin in many Assembly Constituencies in the state.
He said the CAB may lead to grant citizenship to only 5.04 lakh Bengali-speaking Hindus who had fled Bangladesh because of persecution, and were left out of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) which was published on August 31, 2019. He said granting citizenship to these Bengali-Speaking Hindus would not pose any threat to Assamese language and indigenous people of Assam.
He said the State Government was open to have discussion on CAB in detail with top-bracket intellectuals to clear the apprehensions/misunderstanding surrounding CAB. He said anti-CAB agitation would not lead to any solution.