GUWAHATI: Amid the protest against Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in Assam, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said not even one person has applied for Indian citizenship. “Today is the fourth day (since the CAA implementation rules were notified). How many in Assam have applied? There is not a single application in Assam. The portal is open,” Sarma told journalists.“CAA will be a fiasco in Assam. There will be no fresh application. We may have to set up camps for those, whose biometrics were locked during the updation of National Register of Citizens (NRC), and ask them to come and apply,” he added.He predicted that the number of people applying for citizenship via CAA will be the lowest in Assam. According to him, it is very unlikely that people, who did not apply for inclusion of their names in NRC, would apply. The reason, he added, is that the question will then arise why they did not apply for NRC. “If you had not applied for NRC, that means you did not come before 2014 but the law (CAA) is very clear that you have to give evidence you came prior to 2014. Therefore, this law will be completely insignificant in Assam,” Sarma said.He indicated that the anti-CAA agitation in the state is going along the lines of the six-year-long bloody Assam Agitation of the early 1980s.“I have a good understanding of Assam politics. People will not come here as the state has a strong ecosystem. Assam is used as a corridor (by the illegal immigrants). The Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants have not also stayed back in Assam. They enter and go out,” Sarma said.Citing complications for the immigrants in Assam such as that the state has various foreigners’ tribunals which determine the nationality of doubtful citizens and categorisation of people as ‘D voters’ (doubtful voters), he said it is obvious the immigrants would prefer West Bengal or another state in the mainland to Assam which do not have these mechanisms.“The daily wage of labourers in Assam is Rs 100 while it is Rs 300 in Gujarat. If the people of Assam go to Gujarat and Karnataka to work, then why should people from Bangladesh come to Assam instead of going to Gujarat and Karnataka?” he argued.He claimed that Assam is now out of the problem of illegal migration. Slamming certain elements for spreading “half news”, he said the Hindu population of Bangladesh declined by 1 crore over a period of time due to conversion, not illegal migration.“The news of declining Hindu population in Bangladesh is spread but it is not said that the Muslim population of that country has increased. Our complaint is that minorities are being converted. That’s why CAA has been brought,” the Assam CM said.Five persons, including a schoolboy, were killed during the anti-CAA agitation in Assam in 2019. Sarma said after the CAA process is over, he would go to the High Court and seek an answer on the deaths because there would not be one crore or 20 lakh applicants as claimed by the protestors.“It’s good that the (citizenship) process has become technology-based. People, who refused to accept and understand CAA, will now have to give an answer,” he said. He added that the data involving people applying for citizenship would go to parliament and it could not be hidden. He requested the people in the state to wait till the data is out.The Citizens’ Rights Protection Committee, a Bengali-speaking organisation in Assam, said applying for citizenship through CAA is a complicated process involving the submission of documents issued by the authorities of the country an applicant is originally from. Then, the organisation added, an applicant also has to give an undertaking that he or she will never apply for Indian citizenship if his or her application gets rejected and therefore, it is unlikely that anybody will apply for citizenship.
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