Lok Sabha MP from Assam, Pradyut Bordoloi came down heavily on Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal for blaming the Congress of spreading misinformation and misleading the people on Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA).
Responding to a tweet by Sonowal, Bordoloi said that the “history will remember the Chief Minister as a “spineless subservient who compromised the aspirations of Assam only to please his overlords”.
The MP also wrote that Sonowal can no longer “fool the people of Assam” by promising to safeguard the jati, mati, bheti (community, land and hearth) .
Earlier, Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had alleged that Congress and “urban naxals” were behind the violent protest against the CAA in Guwahati.
Sonowal was once hailed as Jatiya Nayak (Hero of the Community) for his campaign against illegal immigrants. However, the former student leader turned politician is now the main target of the anti-citizenship act protesters for maintaining “stoic silence” and “surrendering to the BJP”.
The protesters also accused the Chief Minister of betraying the Assamese people. The agitators claim that the CAA will help in giving citizenship to religious minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan and is a threat to Assamese people, their language and culture.
Though Sonowal said that his government was committed to work for the best interests of its people, protests against the contentious CAA continued in Assam with agitators staging sit-ins across the state. However, no violence was reported anywhere in the state.
Violent protests broke out in several parts of the country after the citizenship law was passed in parliament on December 11th, 2019. Four people have been killed in police firing in Assam, while an oil tanker driver was charred to death when his vehicle was set on fire in Orang.
The agitators engaged in pitch battles with security personnel in almost every major city or town, forcing the administration to impose curfew and suspend internet services. The streets of the state turned into a veritable battle zone littered with burnt tyres, logs, stones, rubber pellets and teargas shells as seething protesters descended on the streets opposing the Bill.
The Assam government on December 23rd, 2019 admitted that it did not have intelligence inputs about the large-scale violence during protests against the citizenship law.
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