New Delhi: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram dubbed Monday the National Register of Citizens (NRC) a ‘sinister and mischievous plan’ to divide the country and alleged that the NRC-CAA-NPR exercise is part of the RSS-BJP plan to push its ‘divisive’ agenda of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.
Terming the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) ‘patently discriminatory’, Chidambaram said three neighbouring countries have been included, while Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bhutan excluded and some minority groups, including Muslims, kept out of its ambit.
The people who will be directly affected will be the Muslims of India, the former finance minister said. He added that that all other religious groups, even if excluded under the NRC, will be included under the CAA and it is only the Muslims who will be identified as illegal migrants under the NRC and excluded under the CAA.
“Naturally, there is widespread fear and uncertainty among the Muslims of India” Chidambaram asserted.
He also clarified that there is a world of difference between the NPR of 2010 and that of 2020 and it must be opposed after a ‘failed’ Assam NRC-like exercise.
“The NRC is a sinister and mischievous plan to divide India. Under the NRC, every person residing in India has to prove that he is a citizen of India. In modern, liberal democracies, citizenship is based on the principle of territoriality,” Chidambaram told reporters.
Chidambaram said if the state suspects that a person is not a citizen, the burden of proving it lies on the state. On the contrary, under the NRC, the burden of proving that he is a citizen falls upon the person concerned, he stated.
“This is contrary to the basic tenets of a democracy. It is this perverse burden of proof that was applied in Assam: the result was that 19,06,657 people were identified as illegal migrants or stateless persons. Most of them belong to the poorest and vulnerable sections of society. No one knows what their fate will be,” the senior Congress leader pointed out.
“The NRC-CAA-NPR exercise is part of the RSS-BJP plan to push its divisive agenda of a Hindu Rashtra. The Constitution of India embodies the values of equality, equal protection of the laws, secularism, humanism and constitutional morality. In order to protect these values, every patriotic Indian has the duty to fight the pernicious doctrine of Hindu Rashtra,” Chidambaram added.
PTI
