The decision was taken at a meeting of the Manch held here on Friday. It was attended among others by the Karimganj Citizens Forum and the North-East Minority Students' Association. The organization decided to launch a movement seeking the status of a Union Territory for the Barak Valley districts.
The organizations also called upon all Bengali-speaking people of Assam in general and the Barak Valley in particular "to be united and forget their communal identity while fighting for their citizenship".
The meeting also adopted a five-point charter of demands seeking striking down of the D-voter identification process "which is against the ethos of Indian Citizenship Act", update of the National Register of Citizens, 1951 in an unbiased manner, constitutional safeguard for the people of the Barak Valley, scrapping of the Assam Accord "if it creates hindrance in defining Indian citizenship under the provisions of established law" and separation of the Barak Valley from Assam "if people of the valley are not provided with justice in the question of D voter, citizenship and updating of NRC".
"Indian citizens, especially those belonging to the minority community, are being harassed in the name of doubtful voters," the meeting observed. The organizations also decided to mobilize public opinion by organizing mass meetings and street-corner gatherings in the run-up to the 12-hour bandh.
Last month, the Mahmood Madani faction of the Jamiat Ulema-I-Hind and the AIUDF had launched a movement to stop harassment of Indian citizens in the name of detection of doubtful voters in Assam. The Jamiat had also announced to create a Rs 1-crore corpus to help doubtful voters to fight their causes in court.
About three lakh cases of suspected illegal migrants from Bangladesh are awaiting judgment at Foreigners' Tribunals across the state as there aren't enough judges to dispose of the cases. Since 2001 till May this year, altogether 83,975 cases have been disposed of. Out of them, 12,847 have been declared as illegal migrants under the Foreigners' Act and 2643 under the now-scrapped IM(DT) Act. However, there are still 2,91,792 cases pending in the tribunals, said sources.