SHILLONG: The central executive committee (CEC) of the UDP has adopted a resolution to “highly oppose the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016”.
Addressing a press conference on Monday, senior working president Bindo Lanong said, “We feel the citizenship issue should be dealt with within the (purview of) Citizenship Act and Illegal Migrants Act.”
Criticising the BJP for coming up with the bill, Lanong said the bill threatens the security of the country and the North East in particular. On the continuous struggle of the North East against illegal immigrants, the senior leader recalled a report of the former Assam governor, Lt Gen. (retd) Srinivas Kumar Sinha, to then president KR Narayanan in 1998 on growing infiltration. “He (Sinha) had written to the then President of India about several lakhs of people from Bangladesh who have infiltrated into India,” he said and added that Assam is agitating against infiltration even today.
“If Assam is struggling with infiltration, the next target is Meghalaya. This is the adverse effect of infiltration,” he said.
UDP general secretary Jemino Mawthoh said the party will write to all chief ministers in the North East to work in close coordination for the protection of indigenous people in the region. Meanwhile, president of KSU Lambok Marngar said, “We will not budge from our demand that the bill should be scrapped.”
He added that the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) had offered to exempt the North East from the citizenship bill but the NGOs demanded scrapping it. Marngar termed the statement of the Ministry of Home Affairs that Indian citizenship cannot be granted without the states’ consent as misleading.
“It all comes to the same thing. If they get citizenship elsewhere in India, they can enter the North East and Meghalaya. Hence, we demand the bill should be scrapped and there is no other option,” he added.
