Assam CM denies Chakma-Hajong relocation amid citizenship discussions
There are more than 67,000 Chakma and Hajong tribals residing in Arunachal Pradesh who are not eligible for permanent resident certificates or citizenship in the state.
How dare you think of maligning an already Indian citizen by offering citizenship further? This is utter humiliating and an assault to the dignity of Matuas. We won’t allow the BJP to run rollers on us with CAA, said Mamata Bala Thakur, MP, Rajya Sabha and chairperson of Matua Mahasangha during a conference here today.
“You have already offered us EPICs, Aadhaar cards, our people have voted to elect public representatives over the years and now they are out to term us as outsiders, intruders. They are asking for nine-fold papers in support of citizenship, which not only the Matuas, most of the citizens including the Prime Minister or home minister won’t be able to table on demand,” she blasted.
Most of the 3 crore Matuas live in North 24 Parganas, Nadia and in some parts of Hooghly, East and West Burdwan districts.
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The Matua Mahasangha’s Jaugram – Jhampandanga regional committee in Jamalpur in East Burdwan arranged a grand conference today where Mamata Bala joined. The TMC leaders rushed to utilise the grand assembly to gear up mass movement against CAA, which came into effect last week. The chief minister, Mamata Banerjee also has warned the Matuas to stay away from using the Centre’s dedicated portal for citizenship registration saying: “Once applied, the applicant voluntarily accepts that he or she’s an emigrant.
Mamata Bala further questioned, “Why the PMO, in January, 2020, responding to an RTI, had clearly stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a citizen of India by birth in terms of Section 3 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and didn’t require to have a citizenship by registration?” MLA, Jamalpur, Alok Majhi also joined the conference.
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