North East student bodies demand revocation of ”communal, unconstitutional” CAA

AASU leaders addressing a news conference in New Delhi on Tuesday
By Naz Asghar

Jan 7, 2020

New Delhi: Several major students organisations of north-eastern states on Tuesday demanded revocation of the Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA) terming it as a betrayal of the 1985 Assam accord and as communal and unconstitutional.

”We don’t want to be turned into a minority in our own state by illegal Bangladeshi migrants whether Hindus or Muslims,” the student leaders said adressing a news conference at the Press Club of India here.

Foreigners should be deported irrespective of which religion they belong to, and the people of North East were opposing the CAA also because it was against the secular principle of the Constitution as gives citizenship on the basis of religion, they said

The student leaders said the BJP and the Congress, the aGP have failed the people of North East, as the Government of India wants them to be rendered a second class citizen and want them to be outnumbered by infiltrators who are the vote banks of different parties, they said.

The press conference was addressed by All Assam Students Union(AASU) president Dipanka Kumar Nath, AASU General Secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi, North East Students Organisation(NESO) chairman Samuel B Jyrwa, NESO secretary general Sinam Prakash Singh.

”Instead of punishing the infiltrators, the Government is trying to reward them with citizenship,” Samuel Jyrwa said.

Chief Advisor to the ASSU Samujjal Bhattacharya attacked the Modi government and the BJP government in the state, saying they were trying to crush peaceful resistance of the people by force.

”The Assam Accord was signed after six years of agitation in which the innocent lost their lives, thousands were injured and our sisters and mother were raped. The Accord is a national commitment which has to be honoured, and we will not stop our fight unless our demands are met,” he said.

When asked whether the people were looking for some political alternative and whether they planned to join politics, Bhattacharya said the people were thinking about the alternative but said their own organisation was not going to enter politics.

He also condemned the JNU violence and expressed the AASU and NESO solidarity with the students.

Gogoi and Kumar pointed out that under the Assam Accord, the state had already accepted many illegal migrants from Bangladesh who had come before March 1971, and it was not capable of taking any load further.
The student leaders said they had come to Delhi to make their voices heard at the national level.

”We appeal to the people of the country to support our fight for justice,” AASU and NESO leaders said.

–India News Stream