© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The Congress on Thursday welcomed the Supreme Court verdict upholding the constitutional validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act of 1955 that granted citizenship to immigrants who entered Assam up to March 25, 1971.
Congress insiders said the top court settling the matter once and for all and not turning the clock back to 1951 as the cut-off year might rob Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma of a key element of his “cocktail of Hindutva and Assamese identity politics”. The issue of undocumented immigration from Bangladesh coupled with Assamese identity politics has been a key ingredient of Sarma’s politics for some time and he sharpened the plank after the Lok Sabha elections. In the first week of September, he surprised many by announcing that his government would implement 52 recommendations from the four-year-old report of the Justice Biplab Sharma Committee on Clause 6 of the Assam Accord to safeguard the interests of the state’s indigenous people.
Clause 6 states that appropriate constitutional, legislative, and administrative safeguards will be provided to protect, preserve, and promote the cultural, social, and linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people. The Centre set up the committee in 2019 in the wake of widespread protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The panel submitted its report a year later to then Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal for it to be handed over to Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Assam had seen protests before and after the passage of the CAA, which provides citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.
Against that backdrop, one of the key recommendations of the Justice Sharma Committee was on the definition of “Assamese people” for the purpose of implementing Clause 6. It said Assamese people meant those belonging to the Assamese community, Indigenous Tribals, Other Indigenous Communities of Assam, and Indian citizens residing in the territory of Assam on or before January 1, 1951, and the descendants of all four.
In September first week, the Assam government announced it would implement 52 recommendations of the panel and some three weeks ago Sarma declared that the state government had accepted 1951 as the cut-off year for implementing specific recommendations. He, however, said the definition of “Assamese people” was confined to only the context of the report’s recommendations.
With the Supreme Court’s verdict, the Congress and other Opposition parties feel that the political debate over the 1951 versus 1971 cut-off years and the push for turning the clock back to 1951 will now perhaps slow down.
“The cut-off date of March 25, 1971, for citizenship was set in the Assam Accord for historical reasons. It has been politicised time and again to keep the pot boiling. Finally, the Supreme Court has settled it and the BJP government in Assam should not meddle with it anymore to create divisions in the state,” Rajya Sabha MP and Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Sushmita Dev told The Indian Express.
Dev, a Bengali Hindu from the Barak Valley, alleged that the BJP government in Assam of late had been trying to change the cut-off year to 1951. “Why are they doing it? Because for the simple reason that the sentiment in Assam was against the BJP and by trying to push back the cut-off date and year they are playing with the sentiments of the people of Assam, trying to divide the people of Assam, something that had been settled 39 years ago. So, the Supreme Court has finally settled this issue. I hope that there are no further backdoor efforts made by the BJP government in Assam to change that cut-off date,” she said.
The Congress’s Lok Sabha MP from Jorhat, Gaurav Gogoi, and state Congress president Bhupen Borah welcomed the verdict. But the Congress too cannot politically afford not to ignore the politics of Assamese identity. “The constitutional validity of the historic Assam Accord has been upheld but we must continue to see that the Accord is implemented in letter and spirit in Assam not only in the present but for generations to come … The Accord understood and reflected the sentiments of the people of Assam,” Gogoi told The Indian Express.
Gogoi also mentioned the Justice Sharma Committee. “Home Minister Amit Shah instituted a committee into the implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord .and yet the Member Secretary of that committee who was a government of India representative did not even sign the final report. That just shows how the Assam Accord has always been something of rhetorical value for the BJP which does not want to find meaningful answers to the problems of Assam and that is why the NRC process remains incomplete,” said the MP.
