Guwahati, Aug 14 (PTI) Four decades after the historic Assam Accord was signed to end a six-year-long violent anti-foreigner agitation, its central objective of making the state free of illegal immigrants remains unfulfilled, student leaders and political parties claimed.
The issue of illegal immigration is one of the most contentious topics in Assam’s political and social spheres. Several elections have been fought over this single issue of Bangladeshi infiltrators, who were initially marked as D-voters if their names were found in the electoral rolls.
The Assam Accord was signed on August 15, 1985 after a violent anti-foreigner movement, which claimed the lives of thousands.
Among other clauses, the pact stated that names of all foreigners coming to Assam on or after March 25, 1971, would be detected and deleted from electoral rolls with steps taken to deport them.
The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) and the central government were the three signatories of the accord.
“Successive governments at the Centre and state have failed to implement the pact for 40 years. Illegal foreigners were not detected, deported and their names not deleted from the voter lists,” AASU president Utpal Sarma and general secretary Samiran Phukan said in a joint statement.
Even the paths through which infiltration took place have not been sealed, and it is an “unpardonable sin” committed by the governments, they added.
Unchecked infiltration from Bangladesh threatens the very identity, language, culture and identity of Assamese people, the duo said.
They also reiterated demands for the implementation of the Justice (Retd.) Biplab Kumar Sharma Committee’s report on Clause 6 of the Accord, which promises constitutional, legislative, and administrative safeguards to protect the Assamese people’s identity.
The AASU also demanded implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) after due corrections and exclusion of Assam from the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) seeks to provide Indian citizenship to Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis entering India on or before December 31, 2014 from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after five years of residence here.
On the implementation of the accord, Minister Atul Bora in a post on X said the state government was doing everything possible to implement it.
“We have taken some historic steps to implement the 52 recommendations of Justice (Retd) Biplab Kumar Sharma Committee. In this way, the process is on to execute all clauses of the Accord,” he claimed.
Leader of the opposition in Assam assembly Debabrata Saikia said the Congress, which was in power in both the Centre and the state during signing of the accord, wholeheartedly wants implementation of all clauses.
“The BJP government does not want implementation of the accord, especially as they are strongly against Clause 6. That is why they have introduced CAA, which in a way nullifies the pact,” he added.
The Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), which was formed as an aftereffect of the anti-CAA movement of 2019-20 comprising mostly ex-AASU members, too slammed the BJP for not doing enough to implement the pact.
“The BJP had promised to fully implement the accord before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. However, nothing has been done. Instead, they enacted the CAA and welcomed illegal Bangladeshis coming after 1971,” AJP president Lurinjyoti Gogoi claimed.
The Supreme Court on October 17 last year had upheld the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act which grants Indian citizenship to immigrants who came to Assam between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971.
Section 6A was inserted into the Citizenship Act in 1985 as a special provision to deal with the citizenship of people covered under the Assam Accord.
A five-judge Constitution Bench, headed by then Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, had said the Assam Accord was a political solution to the problem of illegal migration. It had held that the cut-off date of March 25, 1971, for entry into Assam and granting citizenship is correct.
As an outcome of the Assam Accord, the concept of ‘D’ voters was introduced in the state in 1997 by the EC and prepared a list by including those people who allegedly could not provide evidence in favour of their Indian nationality. It does not exist anywhere in India.
Deletion or regularisation of a D-voter is done as per orders of the Foreigners Tribunals (FTs) and the subsequent judgements by higher courts. If the legal system declares one as a foreigner, then his or her name is deleted from the electoral rolls. If a D-voter is termed an Indian citizen by the judiciary, then the prefix ‘D’ is removed from his or her name.
In July last year, the Assam government had asked its Border Police wing not to forward the cases of non-Muslim illegal immigrants entering the state before 2015 to FTs and instead advise them to apply for citizenship through CAA.
Last month, the Assam government instructed all districts to drop ongoing cases of suspected non-Muslim illegal foreigners entering the state before 2015 from the FTs following implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act. PTI TR MNB
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