Protests erupt in Assam over Centre’s order allowing entry of minorities from neighbouring countries without passports till Dec 2024

GUWAHATI: Protests erupted in Assam over the Centre's decision to allow entry, stay, and exit of people from six minority communities of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, who arrived in the country until December 2024 without valid passports and travel documents.

This was done by issuing the Immigration and Foreigners (Exemption) Order, 2025. Many political and apolitical parties viewed this move as an extension of the cut-off date for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, even as scores of parties and organisations, including Congress, Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP), and Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), vehemently opposed the Centre's decision. They said it was, in a way, an extension of the cut-off date for the CAA by 10 years for regularising the entry of illegal Bangladeshis.The All Assam Students' Union (Aasu) demanded the Centre keep Assam out of the purview of the order, through which the student body alleged that the road had been paved for the stay of illegal Bangladeshi nationals who entered the country until last year. "This order is even more dangerous than the CAA. Already, the govt has violated the Assam Accord by imposing the CAA and planning to give citizenship to Hindu Bangladeshis who arrived in the state until 2014.

Now this order will serve a body blow to the indigenous Assamese people. It's totally a communal order to allow minority community people from neighbouring countries who arrived until 2024," said AASU President Utpal Sarma.On Thursday evening, AASU will burn copies of the order across district headquarters of the state. AJP members on Wednesday staged a protest demonstration in Guwahati against the order. While Congress is planning massive protests against the move, Congress members took to the streets in Nazira in upper Assam on Wednesday evening.

The protesters, who went to burn effigies of PM Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, confronted the police.Leader of Opposition and senior Congressman Debabrata Saikia termed September 1, the day when the order was issued, as another "black day" for Assam. He said that due to this extension, people from six communities—Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Parsi, and Christian—will be able to travel to India and Assam without passports and valid travel documents, thus putting an additional burden on Assam. "The Assam Accord will become irrelevant after such an order. As per the Assam Accord, those who came to Assam until March 24, 1971, were to be considered Indian citizens. But through this order, a person who came to Assam from our neighbouring countries even in 2024 will be able to stay in the country," Saikia said. He added that the border monitoring, passport control systems, and foreigners' detection through tribunals have been made irrelevant after the extension.Regional party AJP, on the other hand, termed this order as the “biggest crime” ever committed against the Assamese people. Over a hundred AJP leaders, office-bearers, and workers gathered at the party’s central office in Guwahati, tore up multiple copies of the order, and set them on fire in a symbolic act of defiance. AJP President Lurinjyoti Gogoi and General Secretary Jagadish Bhuyan alleged that driven by an obsession with vote banks, the BJP-led govt chose to extend the deadline at the cost of Assamese identity and survival.

“BJP leaders know very well that the number of Assamese speakers is shrinking year by year. In every decade, the proportion of Assamese-speaking people has dropped by around 5 percent. According to the 2011 Census, only 48 percent of Assam’s population spoke Assamese. Despite knowing this, BJP pushed the CAA to legalise illegal foreigners and accelerate the erosion of Assamese identity. By extending the CAA deadline by another 10 years—until December 31, 2024—the BJP has increased Assam’s burden from 43 years of foreigners to 53 years.

This is a grave injustice,” Gogoi and Bhuyan said in a statement.