He said BJP had been committed to the CAB since 30 years.However, there have been a lot of resentment against the bill and student bodies have voiced their anger against it. The umbrella organisation of student bodies of the region, North East Students’ Organisation, will hold demonstrations on Monday.“We will not accept the bill — it is unconstitutional, illegal and anti-indigenous. We won’t accept it under any circumstances,” said All Assam Students Union (Aasu) chief adviser Samujjal Bhattacharyya.The bill is aimed at making minority communities such as Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan eligible to apply for Indian citizenship. The bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on January 8 but due to protests from several organisations in northeast and some NDA allies, it was not tabled in the Rajya Sabha BJP had often argued that as the NRC authority refused to accept refugee certificates issued before 1971, large-scale Bengali Hindu, Koch Rajbonshi and Buddhists couldn’t make it to the list. Before the Lok Sabha polls early this year, RSS cadres across Assam initiated mass contact programmes, where they explained that the bill is not inconsistent with the interests of the indigenous people in the region.

Source: Economic Times November 18, 2019 03:11 UTC