Citizenship bill

safety and dignity,” Shah said.

“We will have to differentiate between intruders and refugees. The Citizenship amendment bill does not discriminate against anyone and does not snatch anyone’s rights,” Shah said.

The minister said that under the proposed legislation, citizenship will be granted to refugees without even documents, including ration cards, and blamed the

Congress for Partition. “It was the Congress that divided the country on religious lines, not us,” he said.

But a furious Opposition blamed the government for violating the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution and said the Centre was trying to subvert the country’s secular democracy by favouring one religion over another.

Senior Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said that the bill violated the basic spirit of the Constitution and infringed on Article 14, which guarantees equality before law. “The very principle of India is that it is a country for all people of all religion. That has been violated by specifying only certain religion of people who will be eligible for citizenship.” His party colleague and fellow MP Manish Tewari said the bill was “unconstitutional”. “Equals cannot be treated as unequal. When a person comes to India, he is a refugee. You cannot discriminate against him on the basis of religion,” he said.

“The bill is against the Constitution, against the spirit of Constitution and against the ideology propounded by Babasaheb Ambedkar,” Tewari added.

Shah dismissed the criticism, noting that India has given similar rights to people in the past,

Shah said Manmohan Singh and LK Advani could become prime minister and deputy prime minister, respectively, due to such provisions after they came from present-day Pakistan.

He also pointed out that former prime minister Indira Gandhi had granted citizenship to refugees from Bangladesh in 1971, when a war of freedom had broken out in the neighbouring country. “This bill is not even .001 per cent against Muslims. It is against infiltrators,” he said.

Shah also announced that Manipur, a state that had erupted in protest against a previous version of the bill, would be brought under the inner-line permit (ILP) regime, where outsiders require prior clearance to visit an area.

Areas with ILP – which exist in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram – are exempt from the CAB. Also exempt are areas under the sixth schedule of the Constitution – which deals with autonomous tribal-dominated regions in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Shortly after Shah’s announcement, protest and shutdown calls by local groups in Manipur were withdrawn. The minister also held out assurances for the northeast, which has been roiled by protests and shutdowns since the CAB was cleared by the Union Cabinet last week. Hundreds of men and women have spilled out on the streets in protest, burning tyres and shouting slogans saying they are opposed to the entry of any immigrants, irrespective of religion. “There is no reason to get alarmed, there is no need to protest, we want to move forward in peace,” Shah said.

The nine-hour debate revolved around three key themes.

The first was constitutional rights and provisions. The Opposition alleged that the bill violated fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, especially Article 14 that guarantees equality of all citizens before law.

But Shah’s response was that the provision allowed for reasonable classification, which the government fulfilled by not legislating in favour of any particular faith or community but religious minorities facing persecution – which comprised six faiths.

The second was the rights of minorities in India.

The Opposition said the bill discriminated against Muslims and linked faith to citizenship. Shah responded by saying that the bill had nothing to do with Muslims who were citizens of India, and blamed the Congress for dividing India on the basis of religion. He also presented data on persecution of Hindus and other minority faiths in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The third was the North-east. The Opposition alleged that the National Register of Citizens exercise, aimed at detecting illegal immigrants, had failed and that protests had broken out throughout the region because the CAB favoured Hindu immigrants.

Shah said that the exemptions already ensured that most vulnerable regions of the northeast were kept out of the ambit of the bill, and added that his government was committed to the welfare of indigenous communities. “We will never touch Article 371 [which has special provisions to the region].” As the debate went on, tempers flared in the House. All India Majlis-e-ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi tore a copy of the bill and called it an insult to India’s freedom fighters. “The bill is against the Constitution .... It is a conspiracy to make Muslims stateless,” Owaisi said.

Surpriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party said the perception was that every Muslim was feeling insecure and the largest minority community should not feel left out. The BJP’S former ally, the Shiv Sena, said that people who get Indian citizenship under the proposed law should

ACROSS

DOWN