AASU protests Centre's new order on foreigners, seeks withdrawal of CAA from Assam

Guwahati, Sep 4 (PTI) The All Assam Students' Union (AASU) on Thursday protested for 11 hours against the Centre’s recent order under the Foreigners Act, allowing members of minority communities from neighbouring countries to stay in India without valid documents, and demanded that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) be withdrawn from the state.

The influential students’ body demonstrated at all district headquarters, demanding that all foreigners, along with fundamentalist elements, be sent back.

The Centre’s order, issued under the recently implemented Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, allows members of minority communities—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.

According to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), which came into effect last year, similar groups who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014, are eligible for Indian citizenship.

AASU President Utpal Sarma told reporters here that the Centre's move will open the ''floodgates for settling more illegal Hindu Bangladeshis in Assam, which we cannot allow.” Noting that Assam is the only state that has been agitating since Independence to safeguard its identity, he said, ''We have been left with no choice but to protest and agitate for our survival.'' The northeastern state neighbouring Bangladesh witnessed a violent six-year-long anti-foreigner agitation, which culminated in the signing of the Assam Accord in 1985. The pact established March 25, 1971, as the cut-off date for determining the citizenship of migrants, with those arriving after this date to be detected and expelled.

The AASU was a key force behind the agitation.

Sarma claimed that the Centre's order was ''communal, anti-Assamese and destructive for the future of the state's indigenous people''.

The order was even ''more dangerous'' than the CAA, and both should be withdrawn from the state, he said.

''The Assam Accord had set March 1971 as the cut-off date for detecting and deporting illegal migrants, but the CAA extended it to 2014 and now this order to 2024. The Government of India has once again betrayed Assam,'' he said.

Regarding Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's statement that so far only 12 people have applied for citizenship under CAA and only three have got it, the AASU President said that people are not applying due to the fear that if once the CAA is withdrawn from the state, they will be marked as foreigners.

''The chief minister himself admitted that five people became 'martyrs' during the CAA agitation in the state in 2019, then why is the state government not giving relief to their family members?'' he asked.

The people of Assam have not accepted CAA, and ''it must be withdrawn from the state,'' the AASU President asserted.

Sarma said that fencing along the Indo-Bangladesh border is still incomplete and ''this must be taken up on a war footing''.

The AASU President said that today's protest was the first phase of their agitation and will conclude on September 23 with a torchlight procession. PTI DG NN