Assurances.. reassurances! MHA Shah adds to responsibility towards refugee brothers, a respectable place in India

New Delhi, January 03: Reassuring the fact that no Indian will lose his or her nationality due to the Citizenship Amendment Act, MHA Amit Shah on Friday affirmed that the protests against the newly enacted legislation are mostly political and also misleading.

 

Challenging Congress's Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi to show one clause in the CAA under which anyone is going to lose Indian citizenship, Shah said that people are being misguided and that the BJP is striving hard to convince them of the truth.

 

 

"Under the CAA, the government wants to give citizenship to persecuted minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. I want to say clearly that there is no provision in the CAA in which one can lose citizenship", he confirmed adding that it is our responsibility to give these refugee brothers a respectable place in India.

 

According to the CAA, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 facing religious persecution there will not be treated as illegal immigrants but be given Indian citizenship. The Home Minister said the Census 2021 and the National Population Register (NPR), which government plans to conduct along with the house-listing phase of census from April to September 2020, have nothing to do with the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

 

"Census and NPR take place in the country every 10 years and this time also it is happening after 10 years. Congress has done this repeatedly but today, the Congress is opposing it," he said. Replying to a separate query about the Bihar assembly elections likely to be held later this year, Shah said the NDA will contest the polls under the leadership of JD-U president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.