ZNP demands withdrawal of Citizenship (Amendment) bill

Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP) today demanded that the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 should withdraw the bill or at least exempt Mizoram from the purview of the proposed amendment.
In a memorandum submitted to Satyapal Singh, Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, the ZNP claimed that the bill, if passed by Parliament would create demographic disaster for small indigenous people like the Mizos inhabiting small state and sharing borders with foreign countries.
"The bill, if passed, will open a flood-gate of communal turmoil in Mizoram which is limping back to normalcy after two decades of insurgency," the party said, adding that the bill is nothing but "regularisation" of thousands of the present illegal migrants as well as an "open invitation" to a much more Bangladeshis to come to Mizoram.

The memorandum, signed by ZNP chief and former Lok Sabha member Lalduhoma alleged that the bill, though could be inferred as drafted with humanitarianism, many displaced and persecuted communities like the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar and Uyghur Muslims of China have been left out.
"Humanitarianism cannot be equated as a cause which in turn poses a potential assimilation to the native inhabitants of Mizoram and other North East States," it said.
The ZNP claimed that the bill, if passed would regularise thousands of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, mainly Chakma community, residing in the state illegally.