NEW DELHI – India’s lower house passed on Tuesday legislation that willgrant citizenship to members of certain religious minorities but notMuslims, sparking protests in the country’s northeast.
The bill covers select groups — including Hindus, Christians and Sikhs –who moved from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan and who have lived inIndia for at least six years.
Muslims are excluded, in what critics say is a transparent pitch by Hindunationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi to voters as India gears up forelections due by May.
The legislation, which still needs approval in the upper house, sparked asecond day of protests on Tuesday in the northeastern state of Assam, wheremillions have settled in recent decades after fleeing neighbouringcountries.
Demonstrators in the state are angry about the bill not because it excludesMuslims but because it grants citizenship to settlers from elsewhere,accusing the migrants of taking away jobs from indigenous groups.
The hilly state of 33 million people known for its tea plantations has beenplagued for decades by tensions between tribal and ethnic indigenous groupsand settlers from outside the region.
Last year the Assam government published a draft citizens’ register thatleft off four million people unable to prove they were living there before1971, when millions fled Bangladesh’s war of independence.
A deadline to provide documents to be included in the registry passed onDecember 31, and the final list is due to be published on June 30.
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In Tuesday’s protests in Assam, the militant North East Students’Organization (NESO) vandalised offices of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) and set banners and posters on fire.
Samujjal Bhattacharyya from NESO told AFP that people in the region wouldnot “accept the political injustice perpetrated by the BJP”.
Police said that protesters threw stones at officers.
“We have identified the stone pelters by seeing video footage and they willbe booked soon,” Assam police official Surjeet Singh Panesar said.
On Monday a small party in the BJP-led coalition in Assam, the Asom GanaParishad (AGP), walked out of the alliance in protest at the bill, sayingit would lead to an influx of Bangladeshi Hindus. – APP/AFP
