Hindu Bengalis move Governor

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Feb 3: The All Assam Bengali Parishad (AABP) has moved State Governor PB Acharya on the issue of citizenship to the Bengali Hindu migrants from Bangladesh.

In a memorandum submitted to the Governor today, the AABP said: “The Central Government on September 7, 2015 decided, on humanitarian considerations, to exempt Bangladeshi and Pakistani tiols belonging to minority communities who have entered India on or before December 31, 2014, in respect of their entry and stay in India without proper documents or after the expiry of relevant documents. The Assam Cabinet in 2012 also took a decision to give shelter to those minority communities who have come to Assam from Bangladesh. The fruits of the Notification, without granting citizenship status to Hindus from Bangladesh are yet to be realized as the Hindi migrants remain de-facto ‘stateless citizens’ for an indefinite period, although Bengali Hindus are indigenous people of undivided India.”

The Parishad drew the attention of the Governor to the plight of Bengali Hindu in Assam in the process of detection and deportation of Bangladeshi foreigners from the State ‘to make a linguistic populist gain of a particular group in the era of vexed competition under the State Reorganization Act on the basis of spoken language and, for granting Citizenship on amending the Citizenship Act so that those migrants from Bangladesh can get citizenship in India and could pursue livelihood, children’s career as citizens of a country; in line with Citizenship Amendment Act, 2004 in case of Hindu migrants from Pakistan in Rajasthan and Gujarat on distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary migrants while referring Article 14 of the Constitution, entering on religious persecution.”