The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) has asked all political parties in the poll-bound State to clear their latest position on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).
The students’ body has also decided to take out a two-wheeler rally across the State on March 20 to press for the scrapping of the controversial law and drum up support for its anti-CAA campaign.
“The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) ignored the Assam Accord and prepared a blueprint to destroy Assam by dumping illegal immigrants on the State. Assam’s indigenous people and AASU had and will continue to resist it,” AASU president Dipanka Kumar Nath said.
“Five people died in the anti-CAA [protests] but that did not dissuade people from protesting. AASU and the people of Assam have rejected this law and will never accept it,” he added.
The AASU says that the CAA, which seeks to protect non-Muslim immigrants who entered India from three neighboring countries till December 31, 2014, is in conflict with the Assam Accord. This accord was signed by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1985 and it prescribes detection and deportation of all immigrants, irrespective of faith, who entered Assam after the midnight of March 24, 1971.
This was also the cut-off date for updating the National Register of Citizens of 1951.
“We have not wavered from what the Assam Accord says. Accepting a set of immigrants who came post-1971 will destroy Assam’s language, culture and literature and reduce the indigenous communities to minority,” Mr. Nath said, appealing to all indigenous communities to be wary.
The AASU president slammed the BJP, seeking to retain power along with its regional allies, for trying to polarize the voters on religious lines ahead of the polls. He asked the party as well as the others to clear their stand on CAA “beyond the poll rhetoric”
The BJP said it was committed to CAA, which was being used by rivals to unnecessarily strike fear in the minds of the indigenous people. The Congress-led grand alliance, said to have hijacked the anti-CAA strategy of a new regional front, has promised to nullify the “communal law” if it comes to power.
The Congress is the only party that has launched an anti-CAA campaign and appealed to the people to reject all parties that endorse the CAA.
With inputs from The Hindu.