CAB will give more teeth to illegal immigrants to grab all benefits: BJSM

Our Correspondent

Kokrajhar: Strongly opposing the move of the Centre to pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, the Bodoland Janajati Suraksha Mancha (BJSM) on Tuesday said the Bill would not be beneficial for the indigenous people of Assam, rather it would give more teeth to the illegal immigrants to grab all constitutional opportunities and political space of tribal people in particular.

The president of the BJSM, Janaklal Basumatary said that even the tribal MPs of BTC and Assam lacked the statistics of how many Hindu Pakistani/Bangladeshi illegal foreigners and refugees had illegally settled in tribal belts and blocks under the 6th Schedule administration of BTC area itself. He said it would be the weaker section of tribals who would be adversely affected by CAB as it would give more opportunity to illegal immigrants to grab the socio-economic benefits of tribals and tribal political rights, dominate tribal culture, customs and religious beliefs.

“It is the RSS policy to abolish the constitutional safeguard for tribal and reservation. CAB is not only anti-constitutional and harmful to the people of Assam but it is totally harmful for the tribal people of Assam,” he said.

Basumatary further said, “The ST bill of six communities is also unconstitutional and illegal as the State Government cannot recommend for communities of other States under Article 342(1)(2) of the Constitution.” He added that the 36 communities out of 103 tea workers’ communities were from outside Assam. “They are individual migrant tea workers and individual workers cannot be a community. ST status is granted to the communities of the own State or part of State only under Article 342 (1)(2) of the Constitution. The 36 migrated tea worker communities cannot be recommended by the State Government,” he said.

Basumatary said that the Koch and Rajbongshi were separate castes and there was no ethnic community by the name of Koch Rajbongshi. So this community also could not be recommended by State Government. He said that the recommendation of the State Government on both CAB and the Constitution (Scheduled Tribes) Order (Amendment) Bill, 2019 should be withdrawn.

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