Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) demonstrated in all district headquarters in the state and burnt copies of the government’s order dropping the cases of illegal Hindu Bangladeshis pending in the Foreigners Tribunals today.
The AASU said that this instruction from the government is anti-Assam and anti-indigenous people of the state. The AASU is not going to accept the government’s discrimination against foreigners on the basis of their religions.
AASU president Utpal Sarma said, “We’ll continue to protest the instruction to drop FT cases against illegal Hindu Bangladeshis, besides fighting the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) both democratically and legally. The CAA is not acceptable, and the deportation of foreigners must be in accordance with the cut-off date of the Assam Accord – March 24, 1971 – regardless of the immigrants’ religions.”
Sarma said, “States like Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, and Mizoram have been kept outside the CAA brackets, as these states have ILP (Inner Line Permits) enforced. The areas falling under the Sixth Schedule – 98 percent in Meghalaya, 70 percent in Tripura, and eight Sixth Schedule areas in Assam – have also been exempted from the purview of the CAA. What’s the rationale behind the enforcement of the CAA in the other districts of Assam?”
Both houses of Parliament passed the CAA in December 2019 and notified it on March 11, 2024, permitting citizenships to non-Muslim migrants belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, and Christian religions from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan entering India due to religious persecution before December 31, 2014. According to the CAA, the migrants from these communities who entered India on or before December 31, 2014, will not be treated as illegal.
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