Rights of indigenous people won't be diluted; Chakma, Hajong refugees granted citizenship

New Delhi, September 14: Centre Government has announced that it'll grant citizenship to all Chakma and Hajong refugees living in the Northeast since 1964. The move comes at a time when India is set to deport illegal Rohingya infiltrators.

Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said, the rights of indigenous people won't be diluted. A middle path will be chosen so that 2015 Supreme Court order to grant citizenship to Chakma-Hajong refugees could be honoured.

Rijiju blamed the Congress for the current situation, saying that the then government had settled the refugees in Arunachal Pradesh without taking the local people into confidence.

Several organisations and civil society in Arunachal Pradesh have been opposing citizenship to the Chakma and Hajong refugees saying it would change the demography of the state.

The Chakmas and Hajongs were originally residents of the Chittagong Hill Tracts of the former East Pakistan. They had to flee when their land was submerged by the Kaptai dam project in the 1960s. When Chakmas, Buddhists by faith, and Hindu Hajongs faced religious persecution in East Pakistan, they moved to Lushai Hills of Assam (now Mizoram). Indian government moved them to present-day Arunchal Pradesh.