MPYC staged demonstration in front of BJP office in Tura, supports Assam Accord

Tura: The Meghalaya Pradesh Youth Congress staged a demonstration in front of the BJP office here in Tura on January 11, 2019 in protest against the passing of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 in Lok Sabha recently.

The protest was led by MPYC president Richard Marak who was supported other Youth Congress leaders and more than 200 Youth Congress workers. Effigies of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah were burnt in front of the BJP office.

"The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill is "communally-motivated humanitarianism”. The new law will give the incentive to further immigration leading to the Northeast indigenous communities being reduced to a minority,” claimed the body before the media.

"The BJP’s hypocrisy and dangerous politics are brought to the fore when one considers the provisions of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, the Assam Accord, and the NRC and aligns them with what the BJP professes to be its promises. The goals of NRC and the Bill are mutually exclusive, but this hasn’t stopped BJP from taking a contradictory stand. The present updating of the NRC is borne out of the provisions of the Assam Accord and the insertion of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955. The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, however, negates both the Assam Accord and Section 6A, and thus makes redundant the entire exercise of updating the NRC,” the youth congress claimed further in a press statement.

Supporting the Assam Accord, they further mentioned that the aim of the Accord is to identify, delete, and deport illegal immigrants who have entered India illegally post the agreed upon cut-off date of March 24, 1971. Moreover, the Accord does not differentiate between illegal migrants on the basis of their religion.

The Bill comes into direct conflict with this agreement by allowing illegal migrants of certain religions the citizenship, they claimed.

It is interesting to note that the Bill itself quite clearly uses the phrase ‘illegal migrant’, thereby ensuring that the State is not only aware of their illegal entry into India but will condone it on the basis of their religion complicating the situation even further, earlier in 2015 and 2016, the central government issued two notifications exempting Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014 from deportation or imprisonment even if they have entered or stayed on in India without valid documents. This notification, at the crux of it, already allows for what the Bill stands for, MPYC president Richard Marak claimed in the press statement.

“This is nothing but a vote bank politics, thus, I urge all the members of BJP who think about the future of our children to quit the party because unless we have a BJP free North East, BJP will finish us. Now is the right time, if you think about doing so in the future, it will be too late. To top it all, we have a Chief Minister who is voiceless against his political masters. Even in the past against Good Governance Day and Digital India Day he was silent. All his press releases about withdrawing from NEDA and association with the BJP are nothing but empty threats. As is the case with him, it is all talk and no action. And if we wait and watch, we will see that he will prove that he is spineless against his political masters, the BJP. Neither is he performing upto the standard on all fronts as is wont of the Chief Minister of a state. Jumla after jumla just like his boss,” added Marak further.