Hundreds — under the banner of The North East Students’ Organisation or NESO — protested against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 in Guwahati’s Silphukhuri area on Tuesday afternoon. The protest marks the first in the series of protests the umbrella student organisation has lined up for the rest of the month.
The protest — held just hours before the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s (JPC) meeting in Delhi on the controversial Bill, which seeks to grant citizenship to six religious minority communities (barring Muslims) from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan—  is testament to the swelling opposition to it, not just in Assam but the entire Northeastern region.