Anti-CAA protests back in Assam ahead of PM Modi’s visit

The PM’s visit is anticipated to kick off the BJP’s campaign for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The BJP is the only party to have released a list of candidates for Assam, nominating faces for 11 out of 14 seats in the state.

Assam had seen agitations against the CAA when it was still a Bill under consideration of the previous Modi government. When protests against it flared across the country in December 2019, heated agitation in Assam left at least five people dead.

To express their opposition to CAA, the AASU has planned a programme to commemorate those five people. AASU president Utpal Sarma said that on March 10, leaders of AASU and another 30 regional organisations would hold a 12-hour hunger strike in all district headquarters.

“As per the Assam Accord, we have already taken the burden of additional Bangladeshis up to 1971. So, a small state like Assam cannot take the additional burden of even one more Bangladeshi in our state. Be it Hindu or Muslim, irrespective of religion, if someone has entered Assam post 1971, our demand was to deport them. In that context, the CAA was not at all acceptable to the people of Assam… But the CAA was imposed by virtue of their power in Parliament,” said Sarma.

There had been protests in Assam against what was at the time the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as well.

Five years on, the AASU president said, “the BJP government is saying that they will frame rules… Every time Lok Sabha elections approach, they suddenly remember CAA… For the people of Assam and Northeast, it is a question of identity and existence…”

“The past election was not a referendum on CAA. Elections are not held for one particular issue alone, and there are a number of other issues in Assam, such as unemployment, sealing of the border, flooding and erosion, constitutional safeguards, and so on,” he added.