Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Assam’s Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve on Friday evening amid rising sentiments against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
He is scheduled to go on a safari at the national park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest habitat of the one-horned rhino, and lay foundation stones for projects worth ₹18,000 crore on Saturday.
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He will be the third Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi to visit the park.
Mr. Modi arrived by a special aircraft at Salnibari near Tezpur and took a chopper to Panbari in Golaghat district from where he undertook a 16 km roadshow to the Assam police guest house in Kaziranga’s Kohora area.
Anti-CAA protest
The Prime Minister’s visit was preceded by widespread anti-CAA protests by members of the All Assam Students’ Union and the United Opposition Forum Assam (UOFA), a 16-party bloc headed by the Congress.
The anti-CAA mood has been brewing across large swathes of Assam since Home Minister Amit Shah said the rules of the piece of legislation would be framed soon.
The CAA offers non-Muslims who fled religious persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan on or before December 31, 2014, a window to attain citizenship faster than the normal process.
Meanwhile, Assam Congress president Bhupen Kumar Borah slammed the BJP-led government for allegedly warning bus owners against providing buses to Opposition parties and protesters. “We had planned to engage with the Prime Minister to make him understand how dangerous CAA can be for the people of Assam. We had planned to hire 100 buses to bring individuals from various locations to Kaziranga during his stay,” he told journalists.
He said the government asked bus owners and operators to refrain from participating in the planned protests.
Sivasagar MLA and UOFA spokesperson Akhil Gogoi said the Prime Minister should, during his stay in Assam, assure the people of Assam that CAA will not be implemented.
