Skip to content Skip to navigation

Withdraw Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016

By AT News |

Appeal to withdraw the proposed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.

From: Dr. Kamal Kumar Tanti <kamaltanti@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 12:44 PM
Subject: Request for Withdrawal of proposed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016
To: jccab-lss@sansad.nic.in

To,

Satyapal Singh, MP
Chairman
Select Committee on Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016
Lok Sabha Secretariat,
New Delhi

Subject: Views and Suggestions on Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016

Sir,

As citizens of this country we register our deep anxiety and distress at the proposed amendment of the Citizenship Act under consideration of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament. Whatever humanitarian consideration prompted the proposed amendment granting citizenship to persons belonging to minority communities namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is going to be highly inimical to the indigenous people of Assam and to the federal structure of the state.

At the moment, based on Assam Accord, at the intervention of the Supreme Court of India and on the instruction of the Central government, the Government of Assam is engaged in intensive updating of the National Register for Citizens (NRC) to include people permanently residing in the state till 24th March 1971 and to treat them alone as genuine citizens of the country.

The present attempt of the Central Government to extend citizenship beyond the cutoff date of 24th March, 1971 is not acceptable to the people of Assam. The state of Assam is already overburdened with high influx of foreign nationals from Bangladesh, causing serious economic and social distress and identity crisis for the indigenous communities of Assam. Under these circumstances, the proposed amendment poses an existential threat to the existing indigenous communities. 

In view of the above, we request you to withdraw the proposed amendment, or at the very least to exempt the state of Assam from the purview of the proposed amendment to the Citizenship Act.

Further, we request you to permit the people of Assam to submit their views in their own mother language in view of the fact that neither English nor Hindi is widely known among the indigenous communities of Assam.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Kamal Kumar Tanti.
Guwahati, Assam.

Comments

Rajib Bora's picture

Submitted by Rajib Bora on Tue, 08/05/2018 - 11:00
To The ChairmanJoint Parliamentary Comitteeon Citizenship (Amendment) Bill , 2016 Sub: Opposition of Citizenship (Amendment) Bill , 2016 Sir,As citizens of this country we register our deep anxiety and distress at the proposed amendment of the Citizenship Act under consideration of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament. Whatever humanitarian consideration prompted the proposed amendment granting citizenship to persons belonging to minority communities namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is going to be highly inimical to the indigenous people of Assam and to the federal structure of the state.  At the moment, based on Assam Accord, at the intervention of the Supreme Court of India and on the instruction of the Central government, the Government of Assam is engaged in intensive updating of the National Register for Citizens (NRC) to include people permanently residing in the state till 24th March 1971 and to treat them alone as genuine citizens of the country.  The present attempt of the Central Government to extend citizenship beyond the cutoff date of 24th March, 1971 is not acceptable to the people of Assam. The state of Assam is already overburdened with high influx of foreign nationals from Bangladesh, causing serious economic and social distress and identity crisis for the indigenous communities of Assam. Under these circumstances, the proposed amendment poses an existential threat to the existing indigenous communities.  In view of the above, I request you to withdraw the proposed amendment, or at the very least to exempt the state of Assam from the purview of the proposed amendment to the Citizenship Act. Thanking you, Yours faithfullyRajib BoraDibrugarh, Assam - 3

Pages

Add new comment

Assamese Translator

Assam Times seeks English to Assamese translators!
Join our volunteer team.
Email editor@assamtimes.org.

Random Stories

Rebel linkman held in Sonari

24 Mar 2018 - 9:22pm | Akshaya Pranab Kalita
Namrup: Army’sDAO Division based in Sonari claimed to have held an ULFA(I) linkman on Saturday.Identified as  Bijoy Lama, a local resident of Namtola, he was held during an operation who has...

Itanagar bandh illegal

17 Oct 2015 - 9:40pm | AT News Itanagar
The capital authority is fully prepared to foil the 12 hour Itanagar bandh salted for Monday. In an order issued on Saturday, the deputy commissioner cum district magistrate Mige Kamki has...

No Don Bosco statue in Guwahati

17 Aug 2015 - 7:47am | AT News
There won’t be any Don Bosco statue in Guwahati to honour the saint educator on his 200th birth anniversary. The Don Bosco Society has cleared its position after the miscreants thrown a statue at the...

Conspiracy behind BJP defeat!

11 Feb 2015 - 5:52pm | Prasanta Baruah
Caught in the discomfiture of a humiliating defeat, BJP top leaders are talking of a conspiracy theory in the just concluded assembly polls in Delhi. The party heavyweights are more or less convinced...

Other Contents by Author

Debbie Stothard to interact with Guwahati scribes

Guwahati: Debbie Stothard, a pro-democracy human rights defender who used to work as a journalist, community educator and trainer in Malaysia, Thailand and Australia, will interact with the member-journalists of Guwahati Press Club on Friday. Presently the secretary general of International Federation for Human Rights (www.fidh.org) and a coordinator of Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma (www.altsean.org ), Debbie will address the city based scribes through video conferencing from Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar, at 3.30 pm on 7 December 2018. She is expected to speak about the state of journalism, ongoing democratic movement in Myanmar, the Rohingya controversy, New Delhi’s probable...

Thyroid, Hemoglobin & Sugar tests for Guwahati scribes

Guwahati: Well-known healthcare institution of northeast India, Dispur Hospitals will conduct free blood tests for Thyroid, Hemoglobin & Sugar among the members of Guwahati Press Club (GPC) this week. The hospital representatives will arrive at press club premises on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (6, 7, 8 December 2018) by 3 pm to collect blood samples (20 members per day). The reports will be made available by Monday (10 December) at the press club office. “Prevention is always better. Regular screenings of different parameters like thyroid, hemoglobin, sugar, cholesterol & triglycerides, liver and renal functions are very important for maintaining one’s sound health,” said Dr...

Report released on Assamese Sikhs

Guwahati: The Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (C-NES) organized a panel discussion on ‘Assamese Sikhs in Transition’ a research project which has been prepared in collaboration with Majha House and supported by Heinrich Boll Stiftung (HBS). The Panel which was held on 27th November 2018 at the Kanaklal Baruah auditorium of Assam state Museum, Guwahati. The spirited discussions were led by  Manjit Singh, Sikih litterateur and leader from Assam, and also included presentationw by  Niyati Singh, The project Coordinator and on Skype by  Simran Kaur, the researcher in Punjab. Majha House is a newly formed Trust in Amritsar for creative arts, research and...

New publication on the Assamese Sikhs

Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (C-NES) is currently undertaking a project on the Assamese Sikhs. The project, serving as a tool of information sharing, undertook research on the identity of ‘Assamese/ Axomiya Sikhs’-- who migrated from Punjab to Assam. While they continue to identify as Sikhs, assimilation and acculturation in the context of local traditions and cultures have led to the creation of a syncretistic and unique, though fractured, Sikh identity.  In tracing community roots, the project also seeks to negotiate linkages between the past and present; between the Sikhs located at the two peripheries- the North-east (in Assam and Shillong) and the Northwest (...

Guwahati media to interact with Survival International

Guwahati: Survival International, a global tribal rights’ protection platform, will be available for interaction with member-journalists of Guwahati Press Club on 30 November 2018. Sophie Grig of the influential nonprofit organization will answer various media queries through the video conferencing from London in the Friday program starting at 3 pm. Founded in 1969, Survival International campaigns for the rights of indigenous tribal people across the globe. Its campaigns generally focus on tribal peoples' desires to keep their ancestral lands. The active non-government organization calls these peoples some of the most vulnerable on Earth and aims to eradicate what it calls misconceptions...

Google Fact-checking Workshop

How do you know a photo or a video is actually accurate -- and how to identify fake photos, videos and how to debunk fake news. The Guwahati Press Club in collaboration with Google News Initiative Training Network in India is organisng a day long workshop on fact-checking on November 23, 2018.  In this special workshop, Google certified trainer will walk you through different tools and strategies to identify fake news and debunk it. The workshop is a part of Pan-India initiative of Google News Initiative Training Network to support quality journalism and to curb the spread of disinformation and fake news in India.  The workshop is open to only journalists. The training will be...

Victims lead pledge for conservation of big cat

The Dhirenpara area in Guwahati, Assam, has seen a number of incidents of human-leopard conflict since 2012. The most recent incident in the area took place on November 12, 2017. A leopard—taking shelter in the Dhirenpara Sishu Vidyalaya premises-- wounded five people as it tried to find its way through an irate mob. Of them, Anwar Ali who was seriously wounded succumbed to his injuries in hospital on November 16. Exactly after a year, a prayer meeting was held in the school premises in memory of Anwar Ali. Anwar Ali’s widow and their six-year-old son Rahul were among the students and teachers who took a pledge to carry forward the campaign for human-animal co-existence. On Friday, along...

Next media OPD clinic on Saturday

Guwahati: Northeast India’s pioneer healthcare institution Down Town Hospitals will conduct the next media OPD clinic at Guwahati Press Club on Saturday (17 November 2018), where Dr Hrishikesh Bora (medicine) and Dr Mridusmita Das (gynecology) will be available for free consultations from 3 to 5 pm. The press club has taken the initiative for the benefit of its members along with their dependants, where the last health camp was conducted by the city based Dispur Hospitals. Till date the initiative has been supported by GNRC Hospitals, Ayursundra Hospital, Wintrobe Hospital, Nemcare Hospital, Sun Valley Hospital, Health City Hospital, Barthakur Clinic Hospital etc.

PPFA urges PM Modi to defuse tension in Assam

Guwahati: Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA), while expressing serious concern over mounting tensions between two valleys of the State in the recent past, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take personal initiative in defusing relentless worries among the residents. The forum of nationalist citizens asserted that few anti-national elements were working against the social harmony where the State government in Dispur shockingly remains silent. It may be noted that on the backdrop of Centre’s citizenship amendment initiative in favour of religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, the State witnessed an uproarious situation, where most of the Assamese speaking...

Media OPD clinic concludes at press club

Guwahati: City based Dispur Hospitals conducted the media OPD clinic at Guwahati Press Club on 10 November 2018, where Dr Darpan Dutta (emergency medicine) offered free consultations to the participants. They also got their blood pressure & sugar checked by Nurse Parismita Gogoi in the brief camp. The press club has taken the initiative for the benefit of its members along with their dependants, which were supported by various healthcare institutions including Down Town Hospitals, GNRC Hospitals, Ayursundra Hospital, Wintrobe Hospital, Health City Hospital, Nemcare Hospital, Excelcare Hospital, Sun Valley Hospital, Narayana Hospitals, Swagat Hospital, Barthakur Clinic etc.