Opposition parties protesting to hide their failures, says

BJP leader and Union minister Anurag Singh Thakur on Thursday claimed that opposition parties are protesting against the new citizenship law and nationwide NRC to hide their failures and to divert public attention.

He wondered why Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi is opposing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) when it was introduced by her husband Rajiv Gandhi during his prime ministership.

A six-year agitation demanding identification and deportation of illegal immigrants from Assam was launched by the AASU and others in 1979. It had culminated with the signing of the Assam Accord on August 15, 1985, in the presence of the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The NRC was first prepared in the Northeastern state in 1951 and the Accord stated, among other clauses, that foreigners who came to Assam on or after March 25, 1971 shall be expelled. In 2013, the Supreme Court directed the central and state governments to begin the process for updating NRC, and its final version was published last year.

Speaking to reporters in the city, Thakur said, "I want to question the chief minister (Mamata Banerjee) and other ministers - can they show a word in the Citizenship (Amendment) Act that says citizenship will be taken away?"