Days before the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 was tabled in Parliament, the Centre offered a salve to groups in Assam that are up in arms against it. A meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 2 cleared the formation of a high-level committee to look into the implementation of Clause 6 of the Assam Accord of 1985. That clause aims to protect Assamese identity. The Centre also approved measures envisaged in the Memorandum of Settlement signed with the Bodos in 2003.
The committee will be headed by MP Bezbaruah, the retired Indian Administrative Service officer who chaired a panel back in 2014 to look into the discrimination suffered by people from the North East in other states. Others on the committee include a former advocate general of Assam, former members of the Assam Sahitya Sabha, an educationist, a representative of the All Assam Students’ Union, and the editor of the Sentinel, an English daily published from Assam.