GUWAHATI, Sept 6: The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), a constituent of the BJP-led government in Assam, on Saturday said it will approach the Supreme Court to exempt the northeastern state from the Centre’s recent directive on immigrant foreigners.
The party asserted it was in opposition to any step that goes against the spirit of the Assam Accord, including the recent order.
The Assam Accord was signed on August 15, 1985 after a violent six-year-long anti-foreigner movement. The AGP was formed as an offshoot of the agitation.
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“We have decided to file a writ petition before the Supreme Court, asking for exemption of Assam from the order,” AGP vice-president and former MP Kumar Deepak Das told a press conference here.
“Any step that seeks to dilute or is against the Assam Accord will be protested vehemently by our party,” he said.
The Centre’s order, issued under the recently implemented Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, allows Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India on or before December 31, 2024, to stay in the country without valid travel documents, if they fled religious persecution.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which came into effect last year amid massive protests in the state, makes similar groups who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014, eligible for Indian citizenship.
“We had challenged in the Supreme Court the implementation of CAA in Assam, and demanded that our state be exempted from it, as the Assam Accord sets the deadline for detection of illegal foreigners as March 25, 1971. On similar lines, we will approach the apex court in case of this latest order,” Das said.
“The recent order is a major hurdle in the implementation of the Accord, and we have a non-compromising stand with regard to implementation of all clauses of the pact,” he said.
Asked whether the AGP will continue to remain part of the NDA, Das said no decision has been taken in this regard.
“Last evening, we had a party meeting in which it was decided to approach the apex court. We have full faith in the judiciary and believe it will rule in our favour,” he said.
Taking on the Congress and other parties for questioning the AGP over its stand on the latest directive, Das said, “We have been at the forefront while protesting anything that goes against the Assam Accord. When the CAA was a bill in Parliament, we had come out in protest. Our three ministers in the Assam government had resigned when it was passed in Lok Sabha in 2019.”
To a query if the AGP will launch any other form of agitation along with the legal recourse, its vice-president said, “Other parties and organisations are protesting on the streets. We are two steps ahead of them by going to the court.”
Opposition parties have criticised the latest direction, with the Congress alleging that it would turn the state into a “grazing ground for foreigners”, and termed the order the BJP’s “deep-rooted conspiracy to destroy the very existence of the Assamese people by nullifying the Assam Accord in order to legalise foreigners”.
The Assam Jatiya Parishad has accused the BJP of endangering the existence of the Assamese people for the sake of “Hindu Bangladeshi votes”, calling it the “biggest crime ever committed” against them.
The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) has also protested against the Centre’s order, reiterating its demand that the CAA be withdrawn from the state.
The state BJP unit, however, defended the order, claiming that the opposition was trying to “manipulate” the public, and that it was not an extension of the deadline for eligibility to apply for Indian citizenship. (PTI)
