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In policy matters, the AGP and the BJP are sharply different from each other. Given the fact that the AGP leadership agreed to be the alliance partner of the BJPled 3-party coalition government in Assam. However, from the fastchanging political equation in the State, it seems the AGP may quit the ruling combine under the Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, as several senior leaders of the regional party has remarked just a few days ago if the BJP leaders at the State level impress upon the central party leaders to bring in the most controversial citizenship amendment bill, 2016 in the ongoing session of Parliament. Not surprisingly, the decision to leave the ruling alliance government by the AGP is not a sudden development but has been doing rounds ever since the Modi Government at the centre decided to introduce the bill in parliament to grant citizenship to those Parsis, Buddhists, Sikhs and also the Bengali Hindus who have migrated to India out of fear, after having been persecuted on various grounds by their respective countries. The AGP leaders fear that if the bill is passed in the union legislature, all the Bengali Hindu refugees would be then sheltered in Assam. If that is what actually happens, then the indigenous people in the State would be converted to minority.
But, as sections of the saffron leaders have pointed out, if the Bengali Hindus are granted citizenship, they would never be outnumbered. Instead, their future as a separate nation would remain intact and then, leading to a logical conclusion, a hidden agenda of the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh to create a greater Bangla including Assam would supposedly not be an easy task given the presence of the Hindu Bengalis in Assam. However, another reason for the AGP leaders resisting the passage of the citizenship amendment bill is, that it will distinctly violate the vital provision of the historic Assam ACCORD OF 1971, which says those who have come to Assam after 25 March, 1971 would be treated as foreigners. So, from that very point of view, indeed the bill is violating the Assam Accord.
Dwaipayan Dasgupta
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