Protests in Assam over the Citizenship Bill.
Even as Northeast India witnessed sporadic violence during the dawn-to-dusk shutdown against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill passed in the Lok Sabha today, at least five protesters were injured in a clash with the police at Khumulwng in Tripura. Two of them reportedly suffered bullet wounds.
Sources said the protesters had set some shops ablaze, leaving police no choice but to use force.
The Northeast has been witnessing protests ever since the NDA government said it was going ahead with the controversial bill and yesterday, Asom Gana Parishad, a regional ally of the BJP, exited the ruling coalition in Assam. The state has been witnessing protests since the NDA government said it was going ahead with the controversial bill.
Moments after the bill was passed, Assam BJP spokesperson Mehdi Alam Bora resigned all party posts in protest.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 will amend the laws governing citizenship, formed in 1955, to grant Indian nationality to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, who fled religious persecution from the three neighbouring countries and entered India before December 31, 2014.
Political parties and the civil society opposing the proposed law say it would allow citizenship to illegal Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, who came to the state after March 1971, in violation to the Assam Accord, 1985.
Illegal migration is a sensitive issue in the northeast, where tribals and other ethnic communities wish to keep out the outsiders.