Assam faces shutdown over bid to amend citizenship law
GUWAHATI: Indigenous Assamese organisations have called for a shutdown on Tuesday against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, while police have refused permission to Assam’s Bengali groups for holding a rally in the proposed legislation’s support amid fears of violence.
Finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said all shops and business establishments should remain open Tuesday. “…all government employees must report for their duties or else it will be treated as contempt of the Guwahati High Court order of 2013 which termed bandhs as illegal.”
The bill proposes to grant citizenship to religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Assam’s indigenous groups, 46 of whom are supporting the bandh, oppose the bill as they feel it will marginalize them by encouraging more migrations of the Hindus from neighbouring Bangladesh
The state had witnessed a 6-year agitation against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in which over 800 people lost their lives. The agitation ended in 1985 following the signing of the Assam Accord which sought to detect and deport illegal immigrants and also to take measures to ensure an end to infiltration. The ongoing exercise to update the National Register of Citizens (NRC) is being done for the purpose. Indigenous groups say the NRC exercise will have no meaning if Hindu Bangladeshis are allowed to settle in Assam.
Bengali groups feel immigrants are mostly victims of Partition and persecution in Bangla- desh and hence should be given Indian citizenship. According to the 2011 Census, the percentage of Bengali speaking population in Assam is 28.91. There has been an increase of Bengali speakers from 21.67% in 1991 to 28.91 in 2011. During the same period, the number of Assamese speakers decreased from 57.81% to 48.38%.
Citizen’s Rights Protection Forum, Assam — a conglomeration of 27 Bengali organisations mainly from Barak Valley — planned the rally in Guwahati on November 17 in the bill’s support. “We will not allow the proposed rally to be held because of possible law and order problem,” additional director general of police (special branch) Pallab Bhattacharya said on Sunday.
The refusal came following threats from indigenous groups that they would disrupt the rally. “We warn the Bengali organisations to desist from holding the rally in Guwahati and also urge them not to support the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill,” said Akhil Gogoi of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, one of the groups that called the shutdown.
The shutdown would coincide with a joint parliamentary committee (JPC)’s meeting over the bill ahead of its expected tabling during winter session.
“We have been forced to call for the shutdown as we have no other alternative left to protect rights of the indigenous Assamese...,” Gogoi told journalists on Sunday.
Opposition Congress has supported the shutdown along with a faction of the United Liberation Front of Assam which has given up arms and is in talks with the government. “We support the shutdown as the Congress also believes the proposed bill should be scrapped,” said Congress’s Assam unit chief Ripun Bora.
Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which is part of Assam’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition, has also opposed the bill. On Sunday, an AGP panel met JPC chairman Rajendra Agarwal seeking the bill’s withdrawal.
“The bill violates tenets of the Assam Accord .... We will quit from the government if it enacts the bill,” AGP president Atul Bora told journalists.
The BJP’s state unit chief Ranjit Dass called the shutdown “politically motivated” and asked the people not to support it.