North East body calls for NRC in entire region
Meanwhile demand for NRC in all the Northeastern states has got further boost with Tripura's royal family extending its support for NRC in the state.
Guwahati: A day after the ministry of home affairs clarified the status of Gorkhas, the North East Students Organisation (NESO) has called upon Centre not push the Citizenship Amendment bill 2016 besides implementing the National Register of Citizens in all the Northeastern states.
A 25-member delegation of NESO, led by adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya, met Union home minister Rajnath Singh and his deputy Kiren Rijiju in New Delhi and submitted an eight-point charter of demands.
The NESO demands include education policy and human resources development, expediting the on-going dialogue with different armed groups for an early settlement, illegal migration issue and a comprehensive refugee policy, NRC for North-east and repeal of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill and Long Term Visa.
The NESO claimed that China continued to issue staple visa to those residents of Arunachal Pradesh, who desired to travel to the neighbouring country, and urged the Centre to take up the issue with the Chinese authorities.
The apex body of the students’ organisations of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura has made it clear that they would strongly oppose the proposed move to amend the Citizenship Act.
According to the draft Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, the government intends to grant citizenship to the Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Christians, who fled Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan because of alleged religious persecution and taking shelter in India.
“Infiltration of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is also continuing unabated. We demand that like Assam, the NRC should be implemented in all the other north-eastern states,” NESO chairman Samuel B Jyrwa told reporters.
Meanwhile demand for NRC in all the Northeastern states has got further boost with Tripura’s royal family extending its support for NRC in the state.
The state’s royal scion Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarma announced that “instead of staging dharna and protest in the street” he was taking the “legal” route in the interest of the people and the nation.
A three-judge bench of comprising Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph has already issued notice to the Centre and the Election Commission seeking their opinion on undertaking an exercise to create NRC for Tripura while hearing an PIL by a non-political organization, the Tripura People’s Front, and two persons from the indigenous tribal community of Tripura. (EOM)