Kabindra Purkayastha leads BJP core in a meeting with Rajnath Singh; agenda- NRC, citizenship bill

Former Union Minister and veteran BJP leader Kabindra purkayastha led BJP Barak Valley core committe in a meeting with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi on Sunday. The 11- member-delication met the minister at his residence in the capital on Sunday afternoon. The agenda of the meeting was to discuss various issues regarding NRC and citizenship amendment bill 2016.

Recently, in one of hearings state coordinator Pratik Hajela requested the Supreme Court to scrap five out of fifteen documents that one court use to prove identification in NRC. The core commitee opposed Hajela’s suggestion and requested the home minister to personally look into the matter. “If these five documents are disqualified it will cause havoc in Barak Valley also 2.89 core people made into the final draft on the basis of the 15 documents. When such a number of names have been included on the basis of 15 documents, disqualifying five now makes no sense at all. We shared our opinion with the minister and he assured us that the central and the state governments will submit an affidavit opposing the disqualification to the supreme court ,” Kabindra Purkayastha said to our correspondent after the meeting.

Apart from NRC the delegation also spoke about citizenship amendment bill 2016 and voiced it’s support in favour of the bill. On the other hand a large section of the assamese media have already started criticizing the meeting in Delhi . Many news channel carried headlines ” Barak valley BJP meets Rajnath Singh in support of the foreigners .” Kabindra Purkayastha shames such criticism, he said “The citizenship amendment bill is a central government bill already produced in the parliament. So we were not supporting a foreigner’s bill nor did we make a bill of our own so such criticism is worthless.”

The citizenship amendment Bill, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 15, 2016, seeks to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to provide citizenship to illegal migrants, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian extraction.

Kabindra Purkayastha was very happy with the meeting with the home minister, “we are satisfied with the meeting and we left his residence with a lot of positivity and optimism,” he concluded .