CAB done, over to Clause 6 of Assam Accord now

On December 11, when Brahmaputra Valley in Assam erupted in protest against the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), 2019, in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted in Assamese: ‘The Central Government and I are totally committed to constitutionally safeguard the political, linguistic, cultural and land rights of the Assamese people as per the spirit of Clause 6.’ This was a direct attempt by the prime minister to allay the fears of the Assamese people regarding the CAB which aims to provide Indian citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. A person belonging to any of these faiths, who entered India on or before December 31, 2014, and has lived in India for six years, can apply for Indian citizenship.

Though this provision covers refugees from three Islamic countries, the people in the Northeast fear that it will primarily benefit the illegal Bengali Hindu migrants from Bangladesh who have settled in “large numbers” across the region. The bill was first introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2016, but the previous Modi government could not get it passed in the Rajya Sabha, forcing it to lapse. Taking note of the protests, the revised version of the amendment has exempted certain areas in the region-Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur, almost all of Meghalaya, and parts of Assam and Tripura.