Shillong, Jan 28: The United Democratic Party, one of the allies of the BJP-led Northeast Democratic Alliance (NEDA) will participate in the meeting of all regional political parties from the North East at Guwahati on Tuesday to discuss about the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2016 and demand from the Centre to immediately withdraw this Bill.

The UDP is also a partner of the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government led by the National People’s Party (NPP).

The meeting will see the participation of various political parties including the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), NPP, UDP, Mizo National Front besides other regional parties from various states of the North East.

The UDP opposed the move of the NDA government to implement the Citizenship Amendment Bill and accused the BJP of regularizing illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to become Indian citizens.

UDP senior working Bindo M Lanong said that the party has adopted a resolution to oppose the Bill and alleged the BJP of playing vote bank politics.

“The party was of the view that the citizenship issue should be dealt within the law of the citizenship act and illegal migrant act. Under these relevant acts, the question of citizenship should be dealt with, and not for the purpose of vote investment as being done by the BJP,” Lanong said.

Stating that the Bill if allowed to become an Act will threaten the security of the country and North East in particular, Lanong recalled the then Assam Governor SK Sinha who had written to the President in 1998 about several lakhs of people from Bangladesh had infiltrated into India but the Centre did not do anything about it that time.

“That is why Assam has been agitating from the beginning till now against infiltration of people from Bangladesh to Assam. Meghalaya will be the first state in the North East region to get affected by this adverse effect of infiltration by foreigners in Assam,” Lanong said.

Whether the UDP which is part of the BJP-led NEDA would come out of the Alliance, Lanong said that the party would discuss before taking any decision on the matter.

UDP general secretary Jemino Mawthoh said that the focus of NEDA is purely development of the North East and that there was no talk in NEDA about political relationships.

Mawthoh informed that the UDP would also write to all Chief Ministers in North East urging them to work in tandem in order to safeguard the rights and interest of the indigenous people of the region.