Tempting Bangladeshi votes led government to bring Citizenship Amendment Act: AASU 

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: AASU (All Assam Students’ Union) general secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi has said that ‘had Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal been in the AASU now, he would have led the students’ agitation against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act)’. “He, however, is supporting the anti-Assam Act now as the Chief Minister of the State. This is only for power, nothing else,” he said.

Talking to The Sentinel on Friday, the AASU leader said, “Had Sonowal been in the AASU now, he himself would have said that no one entering Assam after 1971 from Bangladesh should get Indian citizenship. However, as the Chief Minister of the State, he is advocating for the CAA. He has taken a U-turn. It’s for his decision to support the CAA, the people of the State are apprehensive of losing their land, language, literature and culture. The chief ministers of other States of the Northeast have convinced New Delhi to keep their respective States outside the ambit of the new Act. The Assam government, on the contrary, opted to keep silent on the Act.”

Reacting to Sonowal’s statement that very few Hindu Bangladeshis will get Indian citizenship under the CAA, Lurinjyoti Gogoi said, “Our stand is crystal clear – Assam cannot shoulder the burden of a single Bangladeshi, Hindu or Muslim, entering the State after 1971. This is because the State has already shouldered the burden of people entering it from erstwhile East Bengal from 1951-1971. If the Government of India wants to accord Indian citizenship to Bangladeshis entering Assam after 1971, it can do so in Gujarat. We won’t have anything to say at that.”

On the Chief Minister’s comment that Clause 6 is the soul of the Assam Accord, Lurinjyoti Gogoi said, “The entire Assam Accord is the soul of the people of Assam. This is because the Accord is the outcome of the over 855 agitators losing their lives. Clause 5 and other clauses of the Assam Accord are no less important than its Clause 6.”

Reacting to State BJP’s peace procession taken out in Nalbari on Friday, Lurinjyoti said, “The cancellation of the CAA will make the agitators leave the streets. Let the government scrap the CAA first.”

Meanwhile, a statement issued to the press on Friday by AASU president Dipanko Kumar Nath and adviser-in-chief Samujjal Bhattacharya said, “The Chief Minister’s statement on the CAA has made it crystal clear that he supports the Act. The statement has also proved that the government wants to accord Indian citizenship to all Bangladeshis who entered Assam in the past 43 years from 1971-2014. It’s beyond doubt that allured by Bangladeshi votes the government has brought the CAA for electoral gains. What’s even more serious is that with other States of the Northeast being exempted from the ambit of CAA either with ILP (Inner Line Permit) or with autonomy under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, Assam will have to bear the entire burden of illegal Bangladeshis staying in the Northeast. However, we won’t let Assam to be the dumping ground of illegal Bangladeshis.”

The two AASU leaders said that tempted by Bangladeshi votes, the Chief Minister resorted to misguide the people of the State on the Act.

When asked by the media on the Chief Minister’s invitation to the organizations spearheading the agitation against the CAA, Bhattacharya said, “A few days ago the Union Home Minister had a discussion with the AASU on the CAB in New Delhi. However, within 24 hours of the meeting the Central government passed the Bill in the Lok Sabha. Is this discussion to be of that sort?”

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