New Delhi: Senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, on Thursday, slammed BJP leaders' claim over the implementation of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that Congress is against giving Indian citizenship to the Hindu refugees, saying, "Our opposition is not about the inclusion but about exclusion."
Speaking at the JNU campus, Chidambaram said that Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was an outcome of the 'NRC fiasco' in Assam which left 19 lakh people out of the National Register of Citizens.
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The CAA was brought to accommodate 12 lakh Hindus out of the 19 lakh people who could not be included in the final NRC in Assam, he claimed.
Replying to a question by a student asking for best course of action if the CAA is upheld by the apex court, Chidambaram said, "When they touch the excluded...they will only be Muslims, try to identify and throw them out, declare them Stateless. There must be a huge mass movement resisting any Muslim being thrown out or kept in detention camps."
He further said the Congress believes the CAA must be repealed and there should be a political struggle so that National Population Register(NPR) is pushed beyond 2024.
He also took a jibe at the BJP government saying what takes the Constitution makers 3 months to do, the BJP leaders have done in just 3 days. "Maybe one day there will be a Narendra Modi University and having a junior wing of Amit Shah university," he said.
He also said that Congress believes the CAA must be repealed and there should be political struggle so that NPR can be pushed beyond 2024.
(PTI report)