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AGP, BJP’s Assam ally, moves SC against the amended citizenship act
AGP legislator Ramendra Narayan Kalita filed a petition on behalf of the party in the apex court and said that they were “misled” by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the issue.
The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ally, on Monday filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the amended citizenship act.
AGP legislator Ramendra Narayan Kalita filed a petition on behalf of the party in the apex court and said that they were “misled” by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the issue. “As part of the NDA, we were politically compelled to do certain things. We will now take up this fight legally,” Kalita said. The AGP had voted in favour of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in both Houses of Parliament.
A number of functionaries of Assam’s ruling alliance of the BJP and AGP have resigned from their posts in the aftermath of the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) act, with some saying that the state government had failed to gauge the mood of the people against the new law that allows citizenship to migrants from minority communities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
AGP Rajya Sabha parliamentarian Kumar Deepak Das has also filed a petition in the top court in “his personal capacity”. “I filed the petition to oppose the legislation, especially as someone who took part in the Assam Movement,” Das said.
The two petitions contest that CAA violates the Assam Accord, Article 19 of the Constitution and the Preamble, as well as Section 6(A) of the 1986 amendment of the Citizenship Act. The petitions have been listed for December 18.
Senior advocate Upamanyu Hazarika said CAA violates all the provisions mentioned in the petitions. “The [Assam] Accord was a statutory contract and to come to effect, it has to be backed by a legislation, which was provided by the Citizenship Amendment in 1986. The 2019 Act is also violative of the rest,” he said.
