The North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) has termed December 11, 2019, when the CAB was passed in the Rajya Sabha as the ‘black day’ for the indigenous people of Northeast.
Despite massive protests across the Northeast against the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), 2019, the bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday night.
Earlier, the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha in the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday.
The bill seeks to grant Indian citizenship to persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have migrated to India after facing persecution on grounds of religion in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh if they fulfil conditions for grant of citizenship.
In a statement, Samuel B. Jyrwa, chairman and Sinam Prakash Singh, secretary of NESO said: “This is another political injustice perpetrated by the Government of India on the microscopic indigenous communities of Northeast”.
Also read: CAB passed in Rajya Sabha
The NESO has condemned the “sinister ploy of the Government of India to reduce the indigenous people of the Northeast to a minority in their own land by rewarding the illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh” who “have illegally entered Northeast by granting them Indian citizenship”.
As per the bill, the illegal infiltrators who entered India before December 31, 2014 will be eligible to get Indian citizenship.
Also read: Northeast: NESO warns of vigorous stir over CAB
“The Government instead of detaining and deporting these illegal infiltrators from our land is granting them Indian citizenship, this will only encourage more infiltration from Bangladesh in which the Northeast shares a long border of about 1,741km,” the NESO stated.
The NESO said, the approval of the contentious bill by the Union Cabinet on December 4, 2019, the passage of the bill in the Lok Sabha on December 9 and passage of it in the Rajya Sabha on December 11 spell “a bleak future for the indigenous people of the Northeast”.