Hyderabad: President of the All India MIM, Asaduddin Owaisi criticized the BJP government strongly over its vacillation on the issue of bringing in a nation-wide NRC.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were giving contradictory statements to create confusion on the issue, Mr Owaisi said on Monday. Speaking to mediapersons at the party office in the city, Mr Owaisi said, the President of India had in his address to Parliament earlier this year stated that the BJP-led NDA government would bring in the National Registry of Citizens (NRC).
The Prime Minister himself had said in an interview to an English channel earlier that his government would implement the NRC nationwide, he said. Suddenly, Prime Minister Modi had taken a u-turn and said yesterday in a speech that his government was not considering a nation-wide NRC, said Mr Owaisi.
The MIM chief wondered if it was a strategy of the BJP to divert attention of the public by prevaricating and deceiving them on the crucial issue.
“We were hoping the Prime Minister might clearly say that his government will not implement the NRC. Earlier, the BJP had said it ‘may implement the NRC’. There is a vast difference between ‘may’ and ‘shall’. We were hoping that government would refrain from proceeding ahead with the NRC after the death toll and mass protests across the country. Instead, the BJP leadership is creating more confusion as a strategy,” he said.
The Lok Sabha MP from Hyderabad said that Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Shah were taking opposition stands in public over the issue but the people of India would not believe them.
Replying to a question, he said the Supreme Court would hear the petitions on the NRC on January 22.
“We can’t say anything about the viewpoint the Apex Court would take on the matter, but it is our belief that this is an unconstitutional law because it violates fundamental rights and is against the basic structure of the country,” he said. “This law was legislated based on the religion. There cannot be two laws for citizenship, one law for the entire country and another for the northeast. The Modi government had abrogated the Article 370 on the premise of equal law for entire country, but with this, they have given more special status to the northeast region,” Mr Owaisi argued.
He said it has been his consistent stand that the CAA was directly connected to the NRC.
Mr Hemant Biswas Sharma, Finance Minister of Assam and BJP leader, had stated that five lakh Bengali Hindus would be given citizenship in Assam while five lakhs Muslim would be sent to detention centers, Mr Owaisi said.
He said it means in the eyes of Prime Minister Modi, Bengali Hindus in Assam were refugees whereas Bengali Muslims were intruders. He should treat them equally, said Mr Owaisi. If NRC was implemented in entire country, then those who not have documents would be declared illegal.
He said that Mr Modi was misleading the nation while saying that NRC was not mentioned in his regime, when it was constantly mentioned during the debate on the Citizenship Amendment Bill. Mr Shah had several times stated that there would be an NRC across the nation while speaking on behalf of the Modi government. If it was Prime Minster’s viewpoint that Amit Shah had lied, then the Prime Minister must move a privilege motion in Lok Sabha against his own Home Minister for misleading the nation, Mr Owaisi said.
The MIM leader said the preparatory groundwork for NRC was started in the guise of NPR. The NPR, which will be started in April, is part of the NRC, he claimed. “Therefore, we had demanded that NPR work be stopped. During NPR, a low-level official can say he has doubts about someone, which will decide the fate of a citizen,” Owaisi alleged.
He questioned if or not a person marked as “doubtful” in NPR would not face questions during NRC, quoting figures that only five per cent citizens carrying passports and as per a 1996 survey, only half of Indians have birth certificates. “The Modi government spent `1,600 crore on NRC process. Before the final list, BJP people claimed that in Assam, 50 lakhs Muslims were intruders. Now, after the outcome, they are rejecting it,” he said. He also wondered why the government was afraid to respond to his questions.
