Shillong, Nov 18: The opposition Congress has asked the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government to call an all party meeting to ensure that the voice against the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) is unanimous.

Talking to media persons on the sidelines of a meeting held on Monday, Congress leader and MLA of East Shillong, Ampareen Lyngdoh said that she was deeply concerned about the fact that “the CAB is taking shape in a very definite way.”

“We are finally coming to term with the fact that the CAB will be a major agenda in the session currently being held in the parliament. It will be correct for us to suggest the government of Meghalaya to immediately call for an all party meeting because I feel that we need to ensure that the voice against the CAB is a unanimous one, and that we ensure that the peace we have been enjoying in the state doesn’t take a setback,” she said.

According to Lyngdoh, to just say that the Meghalaya Residents Safety and Security Act (MRSSA) has been put in place and that it would attend to the fall out of the CAB in general is ‘insufficient’.

“We cannot take this for granted as we know the amendment of the Act is an ordinance which has also not become effective. We have seen that facilitation centres are yet to become operational. We don’t know whether the MRSSA will actually cover the threat that the CAB in general has,” she wondered.

The Congress leader further demanded that the state government should give a clear indication as to whether it will protest the implementation of the CAB, which seeks to provide citizenship to illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.