By our correspondent
Agartala, February 08, 2019: Over the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016, all the three MPs of CPI-M of Tripura will boycott Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s programme scheduled to be held in Agartala tomorrow. Raising concern over the impact of the Amendment, CPI-M MPs – namely, Jitendra Chowdhury, Sankar Prasad Datta and Jharna Das Biadya will boycott the Prime Minister’s programme.
In a joint statement issued by the MPs, they said, “The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, if enacted into a law, would grossly harm the cause of the North Eastern region in future and fracture the secular fabric of the country. The bill has been conceived against the spirit of our Constitution,”
The Citizenship Amendment Bill has already created serious opposition and all but BJP are opposing Centre’s move to table it in Upper House. Even though, BJP and its allies are in power in all of the eight North Eastern States, opposition against the Bill is stiff and increasingly becoming a major cause of headache for BJP ahead of LS Polls.
Beside CPI-M MPs in Tripura, TSF – the state counterpart of the North-East Students Organisation (NESO), which is spearheading agitations in the entire northeastern region excluding Sikkim against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will also boycott Prime Minister’s programmes.
However, there is no plan to organize demonstration tomorrow – on the day of PM’s visit in Tripura, TSF advisor and NESO vice chairman Upendra Debbarma said.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has strongly opposed the boycott call and urged the government to take stern actions if any individual or organisation tries to disturb and disrupt Prime Minister’s tour. BJP spokesperson Nabendu Bhattacharjee said that people of the state have already boycotted those who gave the call to boycott the Prime Minister’s trip to Tripura. “A record number of people would attend the PM’s public rally on Saturday,” he asserted.
