Shillong Dec 10: The Meghalaya cabinet on Tuesday decided to approach the Centre to impress upon the need to have more strong measures to protect the state after the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB).

After the cabinet meeting, chief minister, Conrad K Sangma said that Union home minister Amit Shah and the Central government would be apprised on the need to have more strong measures to address concerns of the state.

The CAB has been exempted in Schedule Areas of Meghalaya.

“After discussing with our cabinet colleagues, we have decided that we will approach the government of India and the governor to clear the ordinance related to the amendment of Meghalaya Resident Safety and Security Act at the earliest,” he said.

At the same time as a Cabinet, Conrad said, “We have decided to go and meet the Union home minister and apprise him of the situation and urge him that more strong measures in different forms that may be available in different states needs to be taken for the state of Meghalaya also to ensure that more protection can be given to our people.”

Conrad said that there were many ways which the government can do and will urge the home minister and the government of India as a whole that the way they have listened and taken our suggestions into consideration.

“I hope that this time also the government of India will listen to our suggestions and recommendations to ensure that more strong measures are put into place to ensure that the measures to counter influx and protect our people as a whole can be taken up. So these were the discussion that took place,” he informed.

“The MDA government as a whole, we have agreed to push for more measures and to urge the Union government to consider the request of the state government to have more measures that will address concerns of the state. We all agreed that whatever the case may be, we will work in unison as coalition partners,” Conrad said.

On Tura MP Agatha K. Sangma supporting the bill, the chief minister said that Agatha supported as certain provisions have been incorporated in the present bill, but she also stressed for more provisions to ensure that more insulation is done with this bill, as there are many ways in which the government of India can give more protection to the people of Meghalaya and the Northeast as a whole.

On apprehensions that Bangladeshis will be flooded once the CAB is implemented, Conrad said that the power lies with the state government to decide on the applications related to citizenship with the cut-off date of December 31, 2014.

“Any application (for citizenship) that will come in will have to be approved by the state government, first through the Deputy Commissioner, and only then it can go further to the government of India,”