Shillong, Nov 27: the North East Dialogue Forum (NEDF) today has written to Smti. S Mahajan, Lok Sabha Speaker, suggesting to keep the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 in public domain.
The NEDF said that as it was not possible to meet Chairman and members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the concerned Bill, when they had come to Shillong due to our being spread out in different States of the North East region, the organization like to express that the two amendments to the principal Act are not acceptable.
The citizenship cannot be based on religion and not to recognise persons following the Hindu, Jain, Parsis, Sikh, Buddhist, and or Christian religion/ faith coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan as illegal immigrants will inevitably contribute to demographic imbalance with other related consequences of social, economic, political nature.
To reduce from 11 years of domicile as provided in the principal Act to 6 years is an outright negation of the principal Act and would further aggravate the issues. NEDF requested the Speaker of the Lok Sabha to kindly put in the public domain the report of the concerned Parliamentary Standing Committee to be tabled in the Lok Sabha for a wider response by the bona-fide citizens of the country.
Furthermore NEDF express their strong objection to the Passport (Enter into India) Amendment Rules, 2015 for inserting a new clause (ha) in Rule 4, sub-rule (i), in the Passport (enter into India) Rules, 1950 & the Foreigners (Amendment) Order, 2015 by inserting of paragraph “3A” after paragraph 3, in the Foreigners Order, 1948 published in the Gazette of India, Extraordinary on 7thSeptember, 2015.
This amendment rules and amendment order were notified to protect the illegal Hindu Bangladeshis who have entered into the NE region of India on or before the 31stDecember 2014. The above two notifications are intent to shape the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
