Citizenship the soul of India, says Jaitley

Accusing the Congress and Trinamool Congress of compromising the sovereignty of India on the Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) issue, Union minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said political leaders like Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee must realise that sovereignty and citizenship are the soul of India and not “imported vote banks.”

“Leaders like Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee must realise that India’s sovereignty is not a play thing,” Jaitley, who is a Rajya Sabha member and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, wrote in a critical Facebook post. Hitting out at the Congress, Jaitley said it was a mainstream party of Indian politics, but had increasingly started taking “fringe positions” contrary to the stands taken by former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

“India’s sovereignty is paying a heavy price because of the quality of its political discourse. Though Mrs Indira Gandhi and Mr Rajiv Gandhi took a particular position in 1972 and 1985 for the deletion and deportation of foreigners, Rahul Gandhi takes a contrarian position and his party turns turtle,” the Union minister wrote in his blog.

The opposition Congress and Trinamool Congress have disrupted Rajya Sabha proceeding for the last three days over the draft NRC published in Guwahati on Monday that left out four million residents of Assam. The NRC exercise is aimed at identification and deportation of illegal immigrants. Post-independence, it was not only protecting the sovereignty of Jammu and Kashmir that posed a major challenge to independent India, Jaitley said. “At the time of independence and partition of India, Assam was also a sore issue for Pakistan. They resented the fact that like Kashmir, Assam became a part of Independent India.”

Charging the West Bengal CM with changing her stand on the issue of illegal migrants from Bangladesh, Jaitley said that as a federal front leader, Banerjee was also taking a contrary view. “Can India’s sovereignty be decided by such fickle minds and fragile hands? A refugee on account of persecution may have a humanitarian consideration. Illegal migration does not have it...” he said.

Reacting to Jaitley’s blog, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi said the BJP was playing politics over the NRC.

“Only if the former minister had cared to read what the Congress President’s view is, he would have saved his time and energy to write this entire fiction blog. The fact that cannot be denied is that UPA was committed to the cause of deporting non-Indians, irrespective of their religion.”