Party to protest in Delhi on Dec 13 against govt ‘failure’
GUWAHATI: Assam Congress has asserted that the BJP-led central government should immediately start the appeals process of the 19.06 lakh people who were excluded from the National Register of Citizens in the foreigners’ tribunals instead of changing stance and resorting to “diversionary tactics purely for political interests”.
Addressing reporters here on Sunday, Assam Pradesh Congress Committee president, Ripun Bora demanded that the cases of D (doubtful) voters pending in the tribunals should be disposed of by fast-tracking the process “as a majority of them are Indian citizens and have been put under such a category owing to petty technical reasons”.
“Thirdly, we demand that those people lodged in the detention camps for three successive years should be released on bail against a surety amount of Rs 2 lakh as directed by the Supreme Court. A team from the apex court has also visited these camps and reported of human rights violations there,” Bora said.
The APCC chief, while taking a dig at the BJP leadership of running out of issues, alleged that the ruling party had come up with the announcement of a pan-India NRC and the proposal of 1951 as the cut-off date of citizenship determination only to play with people’s emotions and polarise them on the basis of religion.
“We will under no circumstance allow the recently-published NRC to be scrapped or the proposed cut-off date of 1951 to be effected to determine citizenship in Assam, as it violated the provisions of the Assam Accord. If at all such proposals are to be effected then the Accord has to be cancelled first as well as Section 6 A of the Citizenship Act 1955, according to which March 24, 1971 is the cut-off date,” he said.
The Congress leader said that the party would leave no stones unturned to stage agitation to ensure that the final NRC published on August 31 this year was retained even as it had no objection to a pan-India NRC in other states of the country.
“The NRC exercise has been a 14-year struggle with over Rs 1600 crore spent on it and 3.11 crore people making it to the final list after a series of verifications and scrutiny. Various stakeholders, including parties, organisations and citizens have held several rounds of discussions and come out with standard operating procedures, modalities and guidelines approved by none other than the Registrar General of India and the Union home ministry,” Bora said.
“The external affairs ministry too had in September this year recognized NRC as a statutory, transparent, legal process monitored by the Supreme Court. So under what basis is the government now making a U-turn and mulling another NRC in Assam,” he asked.
CAB stance
The APCC chief further said that the party’s stance against the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill was the same as the legislation is “anti-Constitutional” and “anti-secular”.
“Besides, CAB goes against the Assam Accord and would pose a threat to not just political, economic and cultural spheres but to communal harmony and society. The BJP government says that it will include those excluded from NRC by bringing in CAB. But the criterion for citizenship to a foreigner through CAB is religious persecution as opposed to exclusions of India citizens from NRC owing to some technical reasons,” Bora said.
“Besides even the joint parliamentary committee reported that it had no basis to prove whether minorities from neighbouring countries were victims of religious persecution,” he said.
He further said the APCC would stage a demonstration in Delhi on December 13 against such misleading propaganda on CAB and NRC besides “failure of the government to address relevant issues such as economic slowdown, inflation and unemployment.