Senior advocate Kapil Sibal drew flaks after he remarked that Assam was once a part of Myanmar during the hearing on a series of petitions challenging 6A of the Citizenship Act of 1955 in the Supreme Court. A bench of justices led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud began hearing the series of petitions challenging the Citizenship Act on December 5, 2023. While commencing his submissions on behalf of the respondents, senior advocate Kapil Sibal on Thursday told the bench the “migration of populations is embedded in history and cannot be mapped.”
He said, “Assam was a part of Myanmar and then British conquered a part of it and that is how Assam was handed over to the British and you can now imagine the amount of movement of people that took place and under partition, East Bengal and Assam became one and Bengali language was being taught in schools where there was large scale opposition. The interaction and absorption of Bengali population in Assam has a historical context.”
Following this, Assam’s cabinet minister Pijush Hazarika slammed the senior advocate alleging Sibal of tarnishing the history of the state. He said, “Mr @KapilSibal sir has been poorly briefed & speaks a left liberal view that tends to alienate North East by conjuring such theories. At no point of Assam’s history, we were part of Myanmar. From times of Mahabharat & before, we have firmly been an integral part of Bharatvarsh.”