Citizenship Bill creates divide in BJP ally AGP

Guwahati: The silence of the BJP on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, has come as a serious embarrassment for its alliance partner — the regional Asom Gana Parishad  (AGP) — whose grassroots workers have pro-actively joined the anti-citizenship bill movement in Assam.

The Opposition Congress has also added to the problem of the AGP by accusing them of double-speak on opposing the Bill that seeks to grant citizenship to religious minorities (Hindus, Sikhs) from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who sought refuge in India due to religious persecution.

“The AGP's legs are on two boats. It opposes the bill on the one hand, and, on the other, it cannot muster courage to exit the alliance government over the Bill which is going to spell disaster for the state. Is this not opportunistic politics? This is clear double standards,” said Congress president and Rajya Sabha MP Ripun Bora.

AGP president Atul Bora, who is also a Cabinet minister in the ruling BJP-led alliance government, has made it clear that it would be difficult for his party to continue in this alliance if the BJP fails to persuade its central party leadership to scrap the proposed amendment bill.

The problem complicated after three AGP ministers claimed that they opposed the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, at a meeting of the Assam Cabinet. However, Assam government spokesperson and parliamentary affairs minister Chandra Mohan Patowary told reporters that the AGP did not raise any issue related to the Bill in the Cabinet meeting.

The differences cropped up in the party also as AGP general secretary Ramendra Narayan Kalita also addressed the media saying that the three AGP ministers — Atul Bora, Keshab Mahanta and Phani Bhusan Choudhury — did not raise the issue at the Cabinet meeting as chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal had met them before it commenced and requested them to discuss it at the next sitting of the coordination committee of the three alliance partners.

However, AGP ministers reiterated that they raised the issue very strongly in the Cabinet meeting. “We don’t know what prompted the BJP ministers to say that issue was discussed at the Cabinet meeting,” said an upset Mr Bora. The AGP Legislature Party held on May 31 it  decided to oppose the Bill. Veteran AGP leader Prafulla Kumar Mahanta said that the movement against the Citizenship Bill is not anti-Bengali or anti-Hindu, but a “fight for justice”.

“Will Saudi Arabia’s government ask all Indian Muslims to come to Arab? Will the Bangladesh government invite all Muslims to their country? And why will India let them go?” he asked.