As Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday affirmed in the meeting of North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), an ally of National Democratic Alliance (NDA), that the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) has not been consigned to oblivion and will be brought again, some of NEDA members —Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram — expressed serious concerns over the possible demographic changes that could affect their States following CAB’s implementation.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 15, 2016, seeks to amend the Citizenship Act 1955 to provide citizenship to those illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis or Christians from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.
The Bill also reduces the requirement of 11 years of continuous stay in the country to six years to obtain citizenship by naturalisation. The Bill, which was passed by the Lok Sabha on January 8, could not be tabled in the Upper House on account of resistance from all major Opposition parties as also BJP allies in the N-E.
Speaking at the NEDA meeting, attended by all the Chief Ministers of the N-E States, in Guwahati, Shah said the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will be brought again but sought to soothe the concerns of the N-E States, insisting special laws specific to the region will not be touched.
Shah was responding to concerns voiced by the CMs — Conrad Sangma of Meghalaya, Neiphu Rio of Nagaland and Mizoram’s Zoramthanga — who raised their apprehension that the Bill may impact the demography of the N-E States with migrants from foreign countries accorded citizenship.
Sangma urged Shah to take all the States of the region into confidence before bringing in the Bill again.
“What will happen after CAB? Will people continuously come from Bangladesh? Will there be any deadline or a continuous flow? We in Northeast have such fears,” Sangma said.
Visiting the Assam capital for the first time since the vexed final National Register of Citizens (NRC), which validates Indian citizenship of the residents of Assam, was published on August 31, the BJP chief also sought to quell apprehensions about scrapping of Article 371 of the Indian Constitution.
“We will ensure that existing laws of all States of the region remain as they are even after the introduction of the CAB. We have no intention to touch any of these laws applicable to different States of the region,” Shah told a meeting of BJP’s allies who are part of the NEDA.
He also asserted that the cut-off date for CAB will remain December 31, 2014.
