Assam Assembly witnesses noisy scenes over CAB, NRC

The first day of the winter session of the Assam Legislative Assembly on Thursday witnessed noisy scenes over the twin issues of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill as the opposition parties staged a walkout and protested over the issues.

The problem started after the opposition Congress and the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) demanded the cancellation of Question Hour and a discussion on the CAB and the NRC.

Speaker of the Assembly Hitendra Nath Goswami, however, refused to cancel the Question Hour following which the Congress and AIUDF legislators staged a walkout shouting slogans and displaying placards.

Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma later reiterated that the CAB is likely to be passed in the Lok Sabha during the ongoing parliament session and that Union Home Minister Amit Shah is likely to meet the Chief Ministers of the eight northeastern states, opposition leaders and other organisations on November 29 and 30 to discuss the issue of the CAB threadbare.

"A meeting has been scheduled with all stakeholders and invitations have already been sent. All the doubts are likely to be cleared during the meetings," said Sarma.

Speaking about the pan India NRC, Sarma said that the whole country is going to have an NRC and Assam will be a part of it. "The new pan India NRC will be done with one cut off date for the whole country to ensure that those excluded in Assam cannot enrol as citizens in other states and vice versa," he said.

When asked about the opposition's demand on the NRC, the finance minister said that while a few opposition leaders have been opposing the national NRC, the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and other organizations have expressed unhappiness over the present NRC and have sought a review.

Blaming the state NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela, Sarma said that there are genuine Indian citizens' names which have been left out of the NRC. "The present NRC is 100 per cent incorrect. We are going to table in the assembly how Hajela had done financial irregularities," said the Minister.
IANS