The Union cabinet has cleared the religion-specific Citizenship (Amendment) Bill for reintroduction in Parliament, pressing ahead with one of the most contentious pieces of legislation in Independent India amid opposition in the Northeast and deep misgivings in Bengal.

The bill seeks to exclude Muslims while offering citizenship to persecuted communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Sources said a clause “exempting” the Northeast had been included to address the concerns in the region. PTI quoted officials as saying the Inner Line Permit regime areas and regions governed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution are learnt to have been excluded from the bill’s purview.

Residents of other states require Inner Line Permits to visit Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland. The Sixth Schedule, which pledges autonomy to protect the indigenous population, applies to the hill districts of Assam and the entire Meghalaya and Tripura.

Till late on Wednesday night, copies of the bill had not been circulated among members of either House as is mandated by the rules, which specify at least a 24-hour notice. The Modi government has mostly ignored this provision ever since it assumed office in 2014 and Opposition MPs had last week requested Rajya Sabha chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu to ensure that ministers do not spring bills on them the way Union home minister Amit Shah had done with the J&K Reorganisation Bill on August 5.

In the absence of clarity, protests were staged in Assam, especially because the cabinet clearance came less than 24 hours after the powerful All Assam Students’ Union and others had rejected the bill during discussions with Shah in Delhi on Tuesday evening.

There was no official word from the government on when the bill would be brought to Parliament.

Sources said BJP parliamentarians and those belonging to alliance parties had been told to be present in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

The Assam BJP welcomed the cabinet clearance, saying the bill would not have any negative impact on Assam.

Many Opposition parties have from the beginning described the bill as ultra vires, arguing it falls foul of Articles 14 and 15 which provide equality to all and clearly say that the state cannot discriminate against anyone on the basis of religion, caste or gender.

(Telegraph)

The leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, has called a meeting of all Opposition parties on Thursday morning to prepare a joint strategy on the bill. A new convert is the Shiv Sena, which has indicated that it will oppose the bill in keeping with the spirit of the alliance in Maharashtra.

But Naveen Patnaik’s BJD, which had submitted a dissent note to the joint committee of Parliament on the bill, appeared to be changing its stand.

The BJD’s B. Mahtab told The Telegraph that if the concerns he had raised in the dissent note over the inclusion of Assam in the bill that the first Modi government had brought to Parliament were addressed, his party would have no reason to object to the bill.

“Let us see the bill first,’’ he added, refusing to comment on news reports that much of the Northeast had been exempted from the ambit of the legislation.

The other four parties that had submitted dissent notes — the Congress, Trinamul, Samajwadi Party and the CPM — remain steadfast in their opposition to the idea of excluding one community while facilitating citizenship for persecuted communities from the three specified countries.

“Citizenship cannot be based on anyone’s religion,’’ CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury said, adding that the bill was part of the Modi government’s polarising package, which also includes the NRC.

Trinamul underlined that the National Register of Citizens in Assam, a pilot project of sorts for Shah’s plan to have a similar exercise nationwide, had backfired on the BJP. Trinamul feels the BJP now needs the bill to not just polarise but also to allay the fears among the majority of those left out.

Gaurav Gogoi, a Congress MP from Assam, tweeted: “Citizenship Amendment Bill is nothing but a cover-up for BJP’s errors with NRC. It is likely to open up old wounds of ethnic, religious and linguistic differences in Northeast India. A region which has lost two decades of peace due to conflict is being pushed to instability.’’