BJP leader and North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) convenor Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday said ancestors of 90 percent of the Congress leaders in Assam are of Bangladesh origin.
Sarma said this while addressing a peace rally at Dhemaji on Wednesday.
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“If you look at the current Assam Legislative Assembly members, you will find that 90 pc of the Congress leaders may be citizens but their ancestors are Muslims from Bangladesh,” said Sarma.
“We have lost the Assembly constituencies, represented by former chief ministers Sarat Singha and Mahendra Mohan Choudhary. The Naoboicha constituency, which was represented by none other than music maestro Late Bhupen Hazarika, was lost recently,” he said.
“Today, our problems are only from Bangladeshi Muslims. Earlier, there was only one Ajmal but now there are lakhs of Ajmals have born in Assam,” said the Assam finance minister.
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He said around 50 lakh Bangladeshi people have been able to get their names included in the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam.
Also read: CAA: AASU scared to protest during Mahanta & Saikia regimes, says Himanta
“Those organizations, which are otherwise vocal, did not protest against the inclusion stating the matter is in the court,” he said.
“The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is also in the Supreme Court, but still organisations are protesting,” he added.
The final list of the updated NRC in Assam was published on August 31 with the exclusion of 19, 06,657 people.
The Act, which aims to make minority communities such as Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan eligible to apply for Indian citizenship, has been challenged in the Supreme Court.
The apex court has issued a notice to the Centre on a batch of 59 petitions challenging the validity of the CAA.
The next date of hearing is January 22.