Assam was part of Myanmar: Kapil Sibal tells Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: Senior advocate Kapil Sibal has reportedly ‘distorted’ the history of Assam by saying that the Northeast state of Assam was once a part of Myanmar.

“Assam was a part of Myanmar…,” Kapil Sibal had said at the Supreme Court while commencing his submission in regards to petitions relating to Section 6A of the Citizenship Act.

“Migration of people in the population is embedded in history and cannot be mapped. Assam was a part of Myanmar and then the British conquered a part of it and that is how Assam was handed over to the British,” said Sibal.

“…you can now imagine the amount of movement of people that took place and under the partition, East Bengal and Assam became one and Bengali language was being taught in schools where there was large scale opposition. The interaction and absorption of the Bengali population in Assam has a historical context,” Sibal had said.

Meanwhile, Assam minister Pijush Hazarika has reacted strongly to the remarks made by Kapil Sibal, accusing him of allegedly tarnishing the state's history.

The Assam minister said that Kapil Sibal was “poorly briefed and speaks a left liberal view that tends to alienate Northeast by conjuring such theories”.

“At no point of Assam’s history, we were part of Myanmar,” said Pijush Hazarika.

Submit data on Bangladeshi immigrants receiving Indian citizenship: Supreme Court tells Centre

The Supreme Court has asked the union government to submit data in regards to the number of Bangladeshi immigrants having received Indian citizenship in Assam between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971.

The order was given by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by chief justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Thursday (December 07).

The Supreme Court bench was hearing a batch of 17 petitions to investigate the constitutional validity of section 6A of the Citizenship Act concerning illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam.

The Supreme Court asked the Assam government to provide the Centre with the relevant data at the earliest so that the union government could file an affidavit in the matter at the court by December 11.

“We are of the considered view that it would be necessary for the central government to provide databased disclosures to the court,” the Supreme Court bench stated.

The apex court further noted that the affidavit to be filed by the central government should deal with the number of Bangladeshi immigrants, who were granted Indian citizenship under section 6A of the citizenship act between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971.

Also read: Former Nagaland CM SC Jamir writes to PM Modi on Naga political issue

“How many persons have been detected to be foreigners under the Foreigners Tribunals Order 1964 with reference to the above period?” the Supreme Court bench asked.

Notably, section 6A was inserted in the citizenship act as a special provision to deal with the citizenship of people covered under the Assam Accord.

It says those who came to Assam on or after January 1, 1966 but before March 25, 1971 from specified territories, including Bangladesh, in accordance with the Citizenship Act amended in 1985, and since then are residents of the Northeast state, must register themselves under section 18 for acquiring Indian citizenship.

As a result, the provision fixes March 25, 1971 as the cut-off date for granting citizenship to Bangladeshi migrants in Assam.