India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 11—After the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was passed in Rajya Sabha, with 125 members voting in favour and 105 others against it, Congress party announced to challenge the Bill in the Supreme court on the basis of it being “unconstitutional”. The Bill was already passed in Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
Members of the Shiv Sena that had supported the Bill in Lok Sabha yesterday, however, walked out of Rajya Sabha during voting on the Bill on Wednesday.
The Bill has a provision to grant Indian citizenship to six non-Muslim religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. However, the Bill is silent on Tamil Hindu minority in Sri Lanka. Whether the Sri Lankan Hindu Tamil minority members will be granted Indian citizenship or not, is not mentioned in the Bill. Similarly, it is also silent in case of minorities in Maldives or other countries like Indonesia and Malaysia.
While the North-Eastern states of Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya have been on the boil for the last two days with people taking out rallies and holding demonstrations to protest against the bill, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said, “The passage of the Bill marks the victory of narrow-minded and bigoted forces over India’s pluralism”.
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The people in North-Eastern states fear that refugees from Bangladesh would get citizenship after the passage of the Bill and it would not only change their demography but also destroy their identity and culture. The Bill is also likely to change political equations in entire North-East.
Muslims all over the country are apprehensive that the Bill would be used to harass them. As BJP has announced to conduct National Register of Citizen(NRC) exercise all over the country on the pattern of that in Assam, Muslims fear that those who fail to get their names included in NRC list would be declared foreigners and sent to detention centres by seizing their property and assets, and they would be tortured or forced to give up their religion as was being done in China with Uighur Muslims.
Speaking on the Bill, Derek O’Brien of the Trinamool Congress invoked images from Nazi Germany and compared them to the Citizenship Bill and the NRC, starting with an “eerie similarity” between concentration camps and detention camps in the North East. He said that India was “moving from a democracy to a dictatorship”.
Congress MP P Chidambaram, who is on bail in the INX media case, why only three of India’s neighbours had been considered in the bill and why other communities and faiths-such as Sri Lankan Hindus-have been excluded from the Bill.
While Congress leader Kapil Sibal said that Muslims were not afraid of the Bill, Home Minister Amit Shah who tabled the Bill, said there was no need for Indian Muslims to fear. He tried to clarify that the Bill was not intended against the Muslims. “Muslims of the country need not fear because they are and will remain citizens of the country”, said Shah.
Shah said that the Bill intended to grant citizenship to members of minority communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who left their native countries due to religious persecution and taken refuge in India.
Harish Rawat of the Congress said the Bill was discriminatory to Muslims and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution which grants every one equality before the law, irrespective of caste, creed, religion and sex.
Congress leader Abhishek Manu Sanghvi and former minister Manish Tiwari told mediapersons that the party would challenge the Bill in the apex court. Tiwari said that the Bill would be challenged on the basis of it being against the soul of the Indian Constitution. Pavan Varma of JD(U) described the Bill as “divisive’’ and passed with an intention to get political benefits. Surprisingly, his party has supported the Bill in Lok Sabha as well as Rajya Sabha.
Launching a severe attack on the Bill, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi termed the Bill as a “criminal attack on the northeast” and an attempt by the centre to “ethnically cleanse” the region.
Anand Sharma of the Congress, taking part in the debate in the Rajya Sabha, said, “I am convinced this bill is an assault on the very foundation of the Constitution of India. It hurts the very soul of the Constitution of India. It goes against the very preamble of the constitution,” he said.
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