Guwahati: The Congress on Tuesday said it was exploring ways to get the CAA repealed since the BJP’s tally in Rajya Sabha has dipped below 90 for the first time in the past few years.
Various anti-CAA groups staged protests during the day slamming the Assam government’s directive asking its Border Police wing to advise non-Muslim immigrants illegally entering the state before 2015 to apply for citizenship under the contentious law that came into force in March.
“The Congress will never accept CAA. We have been firm on it. And we stand by our promise that when Congress comes to power at the Centre, this law will be repealed,” state party spokesperson Bedabrata Bora told PTI.
“As the BJP’s tally in the Rajya Sabha has come down to below 90 now, we will see what can be done to get the Act repealed via the Upper House,” he added.
Bora also asserted that Assam MP Gaurav Gogoi, who has been named the Congress’ deputy leader in the Lok Sabha for the second time, will play a proactive role in raising the matter and placing undisputable arguments against it.
“A law passed only based on numbers, which goes against the welfare and sentiments of the people, cannot be accepted,” the Congress spokesperson added.
He also criticised the latest directive by the state government of not forwarding cases of non-Muslim infiltrators entering the state prior to 2015 to the Foreigners Tribunal (FT), and instead asking such immigrants to apply through CAA.
In a letter to the Special Director General of Police (Border) recently, Home and Political Secretary Partha Pratim Majumdar asked the Border wing not to forward the cases of persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Jain and Christian communities who entered India prior to December 31, 2014, directly to the FT.
Majumdar stated that such persons should be advised to apply on the citizenship portal for consideration of their application by the Indian government.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had admitted that the government had issued the letter and said it was ‘just a statutory order’ as per the law.
Raijor Dal working president Bhasco De Saikia hit out on the state’s directive, alleging that it was a ploy to “protect Hindu-Bengali infiltrators”.
“The BJP government passed CAA going against the opinion of the people, notified the rules just before this year’s Lok Sabha polls, and now this directive. It is clear that the government is in a hurry to give citizenship to a section of illegal migrants,” Saikia said.
“This directive is clearly to ensure that the cases of illegal Hindu-Bengali migrants do not go to the FTs,” he claimed.
The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) staged protests across the state against the directive, burning copies of the CAA and the latest government order.
Demonstrations were staged in Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Golaghat, Nalbari and Udalguri, among other places on Tuesday.
“The CAA is against the Assam Accord and AASU will never accept it. So, there can be no question of accepting this directive,” an AASU leader claimed.
According to the Assam Accord, names of all foreigners coming to the state on or after March 25, 1971 would be detected and deleted from the electoral rolls and steps would be taken to deport them.
“Our demand for constitutional safeguard of identity of the Assamese people remains, and we ask the government to amend the Constitution if required to ensure it,” they added.
Senior advocate Santanu Borthakur, a petitioner in one of the suits before the Supreme Court against the CAA, said that the government’s latest directive is within legal provisions of the Act.
“However, propriety demands that the government should not have issued it since the CAA as a law has been challenged before the Supreme Court claiming it is unconstitutional,” Borthakur told PTI.
In such a scenario, both the Centre and the state should have waited for the verdict of the Supreme Court, he said.
Borthakur also pointed out that the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) for the state is yet to be notified, with about 19 lakhs of the applicants being left out of the final draft published in August 2019.
“It is common knowledge that majority of the left-out applicants are Hindu Bengalis. Now, when the NRC is notified and these people become foreigners, it will be upon the government how it will deal with them.
“The government can then grant them citizenship as per regular means, or ask them to take the CAA route,” he maintained.
Borthakur said certain provisions of the CAA, like submitting documents of origin of Bangladesh, are proving detrimental as the Hindu Bengalis here have been claiming to have entered Assam before March 25, 1971, the cut-off date for granting citizenship as per the Assam Accord.
The chief minister had stated on Monday that eight people have so far applied under CAA in the state.
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