The Assam Congress on Sunday said it would strongly oppose the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Parliament. It said its high command had already started talking to other political parties to build a consensus against the legislation.
The Centre is going to table the bill with some modification to the earlier version, which had faced stiff resistance in the Northeast.
“We will oppose the bill strongly again in Parliament,” the PCC president, Ripun Bora, one of the most vocal parliamentarians against its earlier version, said here.
Bora said the bill was nothing but a political tool of the BJP to polarise society along religious lines. He described it as anti-constitutional that violates the secular character of the Constitution and its Preamble, besides nullifying the Assam Accord.
The Centre had passed the bill in January but it lapsed after it failed to table the legislation in the Rajya Sabha because of stiff resistance from the Congress and a few other political parties. Bora said a similar protest would be raised over the bill again.
Various anti-bill organisations in the Northeast have already launched a series of agitation along with submission of memoranda to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah against the legislation.
There has been apprehension that the Centre may leave out states like Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya from the ambit of the bill considering protests by the chief ministers. In Assam, BJP leaders are strongly advocating the bill.
The PCC said it would also take all possible measures to foil the Centre’s bid to update the National Register of Citizens again. It said the final NRC, published on August 31, was a result of 14 years of effort that began with tripartite talks between the Centre, All Assam Students’ Union and state government in 2004.
“Names of 3.11 crore applicants were included in the final NRC after meticulously going through documents submitted by them and rounds of hearings. The Congress cannot allow it to be rejected,” said Bora, adding that rejection of the final NRC will be tantamount to contempt of court as the register was updated under the Supreme Court’s supervision.
The Congress is also opposed to making 1951 the cut-off date for updating the NRC, saying it would violate the Assam Accord, which set March 24, 1971, as the cut-off date. “Making 1951 the cut-off date is nothing but a ploy of the BJP to terrorise a certain community,” Bora alleged.
He said instead of triggering a controversy over the NRC, the government should take initiatives so that the 19.06 lakh excluded can appeal to the foreigners tribunals immediately, resolve the D-voter issue and release those who are lodged in detention camps for over three years.
The PCC will organise a mass protest on a number of issues, including the bill and NRC, in New Delhi on December 13.