New Delhi: The venue of the India-Japan summit, which is scheduled to take place in Guwahati from 15-17 December, is likely to be shifted to New Delhi as fresh protests have erupted across Assam against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, ThePrint has learnt.
The Ministry of External Affairs, though, has not yet announced the official venue for the meet.
Official sources said the decision has been taken due to security reasons. It would not be “feasible” to welcome Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for the annual bilateral dialogue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the strife-torn state.
Sources also hinted that the government has “internally” found it would be unwise for PM Modi to visit states where anti-citizenship bill protests have been raging.
The legislation — that promises citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from India’s Muslim-majority neighbours Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh — was passed in the Rajya Sabha Wednesday. It had been passed in the Lok Sabha late Monday.
The government initially wanted to hold the summit in Guwahati to showcase the idea of an “integrated India”, something the Modi government has been trying to present since it first came to power in 2014. But, sources said, the Japanese dispensation was opposed to the idea of a summit being held in Assam and wanted to hold it in New Delhi.
Protests in Assam have turned so violent that the state government Wednesday imposed a curfew in Guwahati.
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Sticky issues in India-Japan ties
The bilateral ties between India and Japan have been facing challenges in the past few weeks with the newly-elected Congress-NCP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra stating it will have to “review” the billion-dollar Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project.
India and Japan held their maiden 2+2 dialogue last month between the foreign and defence ministers of both nations. Tokyo is also upset with New Delhi for walking out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade pact.
RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the 10 member states of the ASEAN members — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam — and its six FTA partners, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
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