GuwahatiSeptember 4, 2025 07:28 PM IST First published on: Sep 4, 2025 at 07:20 PM ISTTHE PROTESTS against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act have started reviving in Assam in the wake of the Immigration and Foreigners (Exemption) Order issued by the government this week, which allows minorities facing religious persecution (essentially non-Muslims) from neighbouring countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who have entered India up till December 31, 2024, to stay without visa and passport requirements.The exemption order was among the various rules notified by the government this week regarding the recently enacted Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025. Under the CAA, those who had entered India till December 31, 2014, were eligible for speedy citizenship if they met other requirements.AdvertisementThe opposition to the CAA in Assam — which saw heated protests in 2019, leaving five dead – is rooted in the state’s long agitation against “foreigners”, regardless of religion, settling in the state. The cut-off date laid down by the 1985 Assam Accord, that eventually added that agitation, was March 24, 1971, timed with the Bangladesh War.The AASU (All Assam Students’ Union), which spearheaded the 1985 agitation and was a signatory to the Assam Accord, other Assamese nationalist groups and Opposition parties have accused the BJP government of moving even further away from the Assam Accord with the latest exemption.While the new provision does not alter the CAA cut-off of December 31, 2014, it grants special protection from prosecution or detention to those who have entered India past the CAA deadline as well. MHA sources said this applies to long-term visa holders, who can go on to acquire Indian citizenship through naturalization, even if they have entered past the CAA deadline.AdvertisementThe AASU has announced a satyagraha against the new order, as well as the CAA, and began this with an 11-hour hunger strike across districts on Thursday.Calling the order “strange”, AASU president Utpal Sarma said, “A small state like Assam will not continue bearing this burden of foreigners. Assam is neither a grazing ground for foreign citizens and nor is it a dustbin. We are warning Narendra Modi and Amit Shah to not treat Assam like a dustbin. And it would be good if (Assam Chief Minister) Himanta Biswa Sarma informed this to the government in Delhi.”Utpal Sarma said that the state had already shown “its big heart” by accepting the Assam Accord with the Centre, and bearing the “burden” of 23 years of immigrants. “Now we will not tolerate the attempt to make Assam carry the burden of any more foreigners.”The “23 years” was a reference to the fact that 1971 was set as the cut-off year in Assam for detection and deletion of foreigners as per the Assam Accord, even as July 1948 was the cut-off date for citizenship for the rest of the country.With Assam headed to polls next year, the BJP has been raising the rhetoric against “infiltrators”. In a visit to Assam last week, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while attacking the Congress, stated that “Assam cannot be led by a leader who protects ghuspaithiya (infiltrators)”.But the new exemption order, as per Congress leader Ripun Bora, amounted to the BJP acknowledging that “infiltration” had taken place while it was in power.“One thing is clear. Amit Shah keeps speaking so much about ghuspaithiya, and Narendra Modi said in 2014 that all illegal immigrants will be made to leave Assam, and that’s why people in Assam had voted for the BJP. But we want to question Modi, Himanta Biswa Sarma and Amit Shah, where did your ghuspaithiya go? Did they go or did you bring in more of them through your laws and exemptions?”Bora added: “What is the meaning of the government issuing this exemption? This means that even today illegal infiltration is still going on in Assam. If infiltration was not happening, why this order?”most readRegional party Assam Jatiya Parishad also began protests against the exemption order on Wednesday, calling it “ the biggest crime ever committed against the Assamese people”. It accused the BJP of “endangering the very existence of the Assamese nation for the sake of Hindu Bangladeshi votes”.Downplaying the exemption order and questioning the relevance of the CAA protests, CM Sarma recently said that only 12 people in all of Assam had applied for citizenship under the CAA, of whom only three had been granted citizenship.“There was a huge hue and cry that 20-25 lakh people would get citizenship in Assam. Now you decide whether it is relevant to discuss the CAA when only 12 applications have been received,” the CM said.