When 3 other CMs can say No

While the BJP government at the Centre has taken an adamant stand to get the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 passed at any cost, as many as three chief ministers of the North-eastern Region have raised strong objections to it. Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh was the first to do so, and it was on January 17 that he clearly stated that his BJP-led government in the state would not support the passage of Citizenship (Amendment) Bill unless there was a provision for protecting the indigenous people of the Northeast. “Unless there is a provision for protecting the indigenous people of Manipur as well as the other Northeastern states, the state government would not support the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill,” Singh said on Thursday. Singh, who has also sent a memorandum to the Centre in this regard, has in the meantime sought the President’s assent for the Manipur Peoples’ (Protection) Bill, which the Manipur State Assembly had passed in July 2018 seeking to grant the status of ‘natives’ to the Meiteis, Pangl Muslims, Scheduled Tribes and all other indigenous communities who have been residents of the state from before 1951.

Likewise, two other chief ministers of the region, Conrad Sangma of Meghalaya and Zoramthanga of Mizoram too have clearly opposed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. Both Sangma and Zoramthanga met Union home minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on Friday and expressed their opposition to the Bill. Sangma said, ‘The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 is against the spirit of the people of the Northeast. It will have serious repercussions and create law-and-order problems in the region,’ the Meghalaya chief minister clearly told the Centre. Mizoram chief minister Zoramthanga, on the other hand, said, ‘The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is dangerous for the Northeast and we cannot accept it.’

What is important is that while N Biren Singh is a prominent BJP leader and heads a BJP-led government in Manipur, Meghalaya chief minister Conrad Sangma belongs to the National People’s Party (NPP) – a constituent of the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) – and he heads a coalition government comprising BJP, UDP, HSPDP, PDF and NCP. Likewise, though Mizoram chief minister Zoramthanga heads a government exclusively of the Mizo National Front (MNF), the regional party is a partner of the NEDA.

Nagaland chief minister Neiphiu Rio had earlier this month asked the Centre to re-examine and review the the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill and called for ensuring that the Bill was in consonance with the Constitution of India and the existing practices of the Nagas. Though the Nagaland government did not directly oppose the Bill, a cabinet resolution passed in January to this effect was clear enough an indication that Rio and his government were against the Bill. Rio’s Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) too is part of the NEDA and his government is a coalition of NDPP and BJP.

With this, only three chief ministers of the Northeast are now left, they being Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu and Tripura chief minister Biplab Deb. Though Khandu has till now maintained silence on the Bill, he knows it clearly what is in store for Arunachal Pradesh once the Bill is passed, particularly on the Chakma front. The population of Chakmas – who had fled East Pakistan in the 1960s and were settled in Changlang and Namsai districts at a time when there was no state legislative assembly in the state – has grown more than two-fold and have already caused serious demographic issues in the state. Given this backdrop, it appears that Pema Khandu – who runs an exclusively BJP government – would soon send singals to New Delhi that his state would oppose the Bill.

Tripura chief minister Biplab Deb, who runs a BJP-led alliance government in Tripura, is definitely in a difficult position. While the BJP’s alliance partner, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) has already announced its decision to oppose the Bill, for Biplab Deb it is a peculiar situation because the demographic change that Tripura has undergone since Independence is the most glaring example of what influx of people from erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh can do in Assam and other Northeastern states. Deb – said to have been born in a relief camp in 1971 to parents who had run away from East Pakistan in the wake of political disturbances there – himself is an example of how people from the neighbouring country have risen to occupy the post of chief minister in a Northeastern state.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal is caught in a piquant situation. He was the ‘jatiya nayak’ – national hero – of Assam when his petition in the Supreme Court had led to the scrapping of the notorious IM(DT) Act in 2006. The apex court, while dismissing the IM(DT) Act had also put on record that infiltration from Bangladesh was an ‘external aggresion’ of Assam. Sonowal, who was then in the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), later shifted allegiance to the BJP and became chief minister in 2016 by taking votes in the name of protecting jaati, maati and bheti (identity, land and hearth) of the indigenous people of Assam. Now, as the BJP has already passed the Bill in Lok Sabha, its ally Asom Gana Parishad has already walked out of the government. Though the Bodo People’s Front (BPF), the other ally of the BJP in Assam, has not formally opposed the Bill, at least one prominent leader Pramila Rani Brahma, a minister in the Sonowal cabinet, has given enough signals that the regional party too was not happy with the Bill.

What stops Sonowal from saying No to the Bill has remained a mystery, especially when several leaders of the BJP including Assam Assembly Speaker Hitendra Nath Goswami, Dispur MLA Atul Bora, Sootea MLA Padma Hazarika and Lahowal MLA Rituparna Barua have already expressed their opposition to it. Is remaining chief minister the only intention of Sonowal? If that is so, then he can very easily get Speaker Hitendra Nath Goswami call a special session of the Assam Assembly and pass a resolution as his Manipur counterpart N Biren Singh has already done, seek 100 per cent reservation of Assembly seats for indigenous people (by making legacy link to 1951 NRC the basis of determining who is ‘indigenous’), place all districts under the Sixth Schedule as the four BTAD districts were placed despite all these districts not having majority Bodo population, and remain chief minister for his entire life.