The Union home ministry on Tuesday asserted that Indian Muslims need not worry as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) will not impact their citizenship and has nothing to do with the community which enjoys equal rights as their Hindu counterparts.
Union minister Prakash Javadekar said the government has taken care of the interests of everyone and 'the interest of India'.
The 84-year old veteran Congressman, who died from post-COVID complications on Monday, was a Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist.
The Bill provides for according Indian citizenship to the the Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six years of residence in India instead of 12 years even if they do not possess any document.
The North East Students' Organisation, the banner organisation of all the influential students unions in the seven north-eastern states, on Thursday shut down the region demanding detection and deportation of illegal Bangladeshi migrants from the region.
'The BJP's tie-ups with the Bodoland People's Front and the Asom Gana Parishad have incurred the wrath of local party leaders and workers ahead of next month's assembly elections.'
'In enacting the citizenship law, the BJP's focus has been so much on consolidating its Hindu vote bank all over the country to divert attention from the economic downturn that the party forgot that there are Hindus and Hindus and that one group of Hindus may not always be warmly embraced by another,' notes Amulya Ganguli.
After several days of intensive statehood agitation by various ethnic communities, the situation in Assam limped back to normalcy on Wednesday. Trains services were restored while movement of vehicles including trucks carrying essential commodities resumed on the highways connecting the Assam and the Northeast to the rest of the country.
'If there are provocations and people try to exploit and manipulate the situation along linguistic, religious lines, then Assam might relapse into its troubled past.'
Even as the deadline set by agitating All Bodo Students' Union and All-Koch-Rajbongshi Students' Union for announcement of dates for tripartite talks by the Centre over their demand for separate state almost comes to an end, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi to apprise them of the situation back home.
The tripartite agreement was signed by Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, top leadership of the four factions of the NDFB, ABSU, Joint Secretary in the Home Ministry Satyendra Garg and Assam Chief Secretary Kumar Sanjay Krishna in presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Sonowal assured people that the state government will provide legal aid to poor people in their fight against exclusion from the NRC so that they can pursue their cases in foreigners tribunals and in higher courts.
Assembly elections in Assam used to be a quiet affair and people outside the state would take little interest in the outcome. This time, even in faraway Delhi, people are keeping tabs on political developments in Assam.
Relief camps in Assam's Kokrajhar and Barpeta districts have 4,615 new refugees, while 376 have left for home in Chirang district since Sunday. In Kokrajhar, 4,587 people have sought refuge where 60,252 are housed in 50 camps while in Chirang, there are 31,442 refugees in 24 camps, official sources said on Monday.
As the counting begins on Friday the public focus in Assam will be mainly on how helpful the 'Modi Wave' has been for the Bharatiya Janata Party to challenge a confident Congress in Assam. Both the parties have contested in 13 out of 14 parliamentary seats.
'If we do this, we will see that the true history of India will be established and the lies will end spontaneously'
Besides, less than 200 applications have been received by the authorities challenging the inclusion of the names of suspected illegal immigrants in the NRC, a list of Assam's residents, two months after a window was opened for claims and objections.
'This movement is not about Hindus, Muslims or Bengalis, but about all Assamese, irrespective of their religious faith or economic class'
The youngest in the CWC is 31-year-old Neeraj Kundan, who is an ex-officio member of the body as the president of the National Students Union of India, the students' wing of the party.
Electioneering for the third and the final phase of polling in Assam to be held on April 24 in six constituencies - Gauhati, Dhubri, Kokrajhar, Barpeta, Mangaldoi and Nowgong -- came to an end on Tuesday afternoon with the election department expecting a high turn out on the basis of overwhelming response of voters in the last two phases of polling in the state.
The officials said immediately after the video of the incident surfaced on July 19, Manipur police decided to suspend the station in-charge of Nongpok Sekmai police station in Thoubal district and four other police personnel.
Twenty odd important political figures and civil society leaders from Assam's conflicts-ridden Bodo heartland have joined Bharatiya Janata Party that has started its 'Mission Bodoland' with bang announcing its intention to provide an alternative to Bodoland people who are fed up with misrule of Bodoland People's Front where has been in power in Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Council over ten years on the trot.
In view of fresh attacks on people from the North East in the rest of India including Delhi and Bengaluru, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Friday demanded enactment of special deterrent law to prevent such racial attacks.
AASU, Cong MP Jairam Ramesh, TMC MP Mahua Moitra, and several NGOs have filed petitions against the act that was assented to by the President yesterday.
The student body's leader L Joykumar said it could cause demographic and social changes in the small state.
Protests raging in Assam against lynching of rape accused Farid Khan in Dimapur in Nagaland on March 5
The TMC team went there at the instruction of party supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The Army and Assam Rifles were requisitioned in the night, and along with the state police, the forces arrested the violence by the morning, the spokesperson said.
AFSPA confers special powers on the armed forces in areas deemed as disturbed.
Trouble broke out when over 5,000 activists of the All Adivasi Students' Association were marching towards the state assembly after holding a rally at Beltola demanding Scheduled Tribe status for the community.The students vandalised property, torched vehicles, attacked policemen and injured a magistrate after they were obstructed by the police. The locals retaliated and clashed with the protestors resulting in injuries to both sides.
Around 800 people, including children and the elderly, are living in pitiable conditions in relief shelters near Thangjing temple and Moirang Lamkhai which are being run by three organisations.
The government views dropout as a barrier to achieving the new National Education Policy's aim of 100 per cent gross enrolment rate at the school level by 2030, according to officials.
As of now, just about 10 lakh people, out of the total 40 lakh, who were excluded in the draft of the NRC have submitted applications for inclusion of their names in the list of Assam's citizens.
At least five persons were injured, one of them critically, when police fired rubber bullets at an unauthorised rally by the All Koch-Rajbongshi Students' Union in Basugaon in western Assam's Chirang district while a bandh called by a militant outfit shutdown the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District Councilarea in Assam on Tuesday.
In the petition, the government stated that the act violates "Articles 14, 21, and 25 of the Constitution of India" and is violative of the basic structure principle of secularism as well.
The SC issued notice to the Centre on the batch of pleas seeking stay on the operation of the law.
'The unfolding events indicate a dangerous internal security situation in Manipur and the region. It can have external ramifications also.'
A bandh called by All Bodoland Minority Students' Union and eight other non-Bodo organisations in protests against killing of at least eight innocent non-Bodo persons by Bodo militant group National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Sangbijit) since Friday has night paralysed life in the violence-affected Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District Council areas in Assam on Monday.
A bandh called by the All Bodoland Minority Students' Union and eight other non-Bodo organisations since Friday night has paralysed life in the violence-affected Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District Council areas in Assam on Monday.
