Need to look beyond CAB : Battling vote bank politics
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: February 15 2019 -
It is a victory for the people, no doubt about it.
Yet at the same time it is imperative that all delve on the line of thought echoed by Finance Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma that without the CAB, 17 Assembly seats in Assam will go to Bangladeshi Muslims.
Qualifying Bangladeshis with Muslims is a different matter, but there must be some element of truth in the observation of the veteran politician from Assam and this is where the Government of the day need to pull up their socks and see how to stem the rot.
Manipur too must have started feeling the pinch of illegal migrants from Bangladesh, without qualifying this with the religious background of the immigrants.
The point is, it does not matter whether the illegal immigrants are Muslims or Hindus or Christians or belong to any other religious beliefs.
The point is illegal migrants can and have made their way to the floor of the Assembly in different States in the North East.
This is what is worrying. Results of vote bank politics one may add.
Providing a protective shield to the illegal immigrants for political gains is at the root cause of all this and so even as the people of the North East celebrate the point that the CAB was not tabled in the Rajya Sabha on the last day, the bigger message behind the large scale protest should not be lost.
It was against giving legitimacy to illegal migrants and this understanding should not be defined by CAB alone.
How sincerely committed are the different political parties to stop the influx of illegal migrants into their respective States ?
Now that CAB has not been tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the most apt way to move forward would be to raise this question again and again.
What is the demographic composition of Jiribam ?
This is a question that should be raised to the political leaders of the day and more particularly to the MLA representing Jiribam Assembly Constituency.
To some this may not be a comfortable question for all knows how vote bank politics has played its part in defining the demographic composition of many places in North East.
One may also look eastward and study the demographic composition of the districts that fall in the easternmost part of the State.
The same is true in the case of Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, which all share border with neighbouring Myanmar.
The anti-CAB stand and the days of protest that followed should be understood in its correct perspective.
A politician like Sarma may pin pointedly say Muslims from Bangladesh, but to the people it should be about migrants from Bangladesh or any of the other neighbouring countries.
This is where the political leaders of the day need to look beyond CAB and the failure to table it in the Rajya Sabha on February 13 and see how cross border movement of people can be checked and regulated thoroughly.
This is where a detailed demographic study of some of the more sensitive localities may be conducted in Manipur.
It would be fruitful too, if research scholars can conduct some study towards this.
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