The Joint Movement Against Citizenship Amendment Bill (JMACAB), a platform body of regional indigenous political parties and tribal students’ organisations, among others, on Monday said they would soon re-launch their movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) unless Tripura was not exempted from its purview.
General secretary of the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT), Jagadish Debbarma, said: “During a meeting on December 12 with Union home minister Amit Shah, we forwarded a demand for keeping Tripura out of the purview of the CAA. Shah assured that he would look into concerns of the indigenous people of the state and said he would hold a meeting with us again. We are still waiting for his reply, but it cannot be delayed inordinately. We will launch our movement again.”
The JMACAB, comprises three indigenous political parties — Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT), National Conference of Tripura (NCT), Tipraland State Party (TSP) — tribal social organisations such as the Borok People Human Rights Organisation (BPHRO) besides tribal students’ organisations and NGOs.
Debbarma said soon they would discuss within the JMCAB their future course of action and the umbrella organisation was also waiting for Shah’s reply. “We will continue our movement till our last breath,” Debbarma told this correspondent. “We are demanding to scrap this Act in the state, ” he added.
If the Centre doesn’t scrap it we shall increase our movement. We are not in a position to take the burdens of illegal people from other countries, so we must launch a stringent democratic movement against the implementation of CAA in Tripura or else we become minority from the majority,” Debbarma told this correspondent.