With just days to go before the publication of the first draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, a landmark in the ethnically fractious state, on December 31, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has sought to soothe apprehensions on the issue.
The NRC was updated in Assam in 1951. Since then, the state has recorded nearly 80 lakh citizens and the status of illegal immigrants in Assam has always been a sensitive issue in the state's politics.
The Assam Accord of 1985 provides that all who entered Assam till midnight of March 24, 1971, will be treated as Indians.
The updating of the NRC was started following a Supreme Court directive in 2005 and the issue was a major poll plank for the BJP in the 2016 state elections. Scrutiny of documents has revealed that the antecedents of nearly 38 lakh people are suspect.
Speaking on the issue on Thursday, Sonowal claimed that all 'genuine' Indians whose names were missing from the draft register would get opportunities to add their names. He also said Assam had received central security forces to ensure law and order and declared that any violence would not be tolerated.
Meanwhile, a prominent peasant leader, Akhil Gogoi, has threatened to launch a mass movement against the Centre's plan to grant citizenship to Hindu Bangladeshis under the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
Gogoi was released from jail on Wednesday after the Guwahati High Court granted him bail after he was arrested on charges of sedition in September. Gogoi heads a farmers' body, the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS).
He declared that his group would not tolerate any Bangladeshi who had entered Assam after March 25, 1971.
(With agency inputs)
