AGP President Atul Bora has written a letter to BJP president Amit Shah registering strong reservations of his party on the Bill.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's problems with its allies seem to be mounting. On a day Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) chief quit the Narendra Modi Cabinet and the NDA, another alliance partner Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) on Monday sounded a warning to the BJP.
The AGP has threatened to quit the NDA if the Centre passes Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. Calling the Citizenship Bill "obnoxious", AGP President Atul Bora has written a letter to BJP president Amit Shah registering strong reservations of his party on the Bill.
"We decided to forge an alliance with the BJP based on an understanding of the Assam Accord. By introducing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, in Parliament, the Centre has violated the understanding," Bora said in the letter.
The issue of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill has been snowballing in Assam as the state has witnessed mounting protests over the past few months over this contentious issue.
Earlier, senior Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) leader and former Assam Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta had told that no country in the world except Israel confers citizenship on the basis of religion.
"...we don't like that. India is a secular country. Citizenship should not be conferred on the basis of religion," he said, adding "this is a dangerous thing for the people of Assam because then we are going to lose our culture, our language and our political right also," Mahanta had said.
He was referring to the 40 lakh names that did not figure in the final draft of the National Register for Citizens (NRC).
A draft NRC for Assam, published on July 30, had excluded names of over 40 lakh people. Of the 3.29 crore people who had filled their applications for the NRC, only 2.89 crore found their names in the draft list. According to 2011 census, Assam has a total population of over 3.11 crore.
The entire NRC exercise was aimed at identifying illegal immigrants in Assam, which shares a 1,880 km border with Bangladesh. Assam had witnessed a massive influx of Bangladeshi immigrants in the past few decades.
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