‘After Pawar, want to talk to Thackeray to know his stance’
MUMBAI: A week after a group of women activists protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) met Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, they now want to meet chief minister Uddhav Thackeray to understand his stance on the controversial laws.
Addressing the media on Tuesday, the women said minority and underprivileged groups, queer, transgender, slum dwellers and tribals could face discrimination if the state government implements the CAA, NPR and
NRC. While the CAA regulates citizenship to religious refugees from India’s neighbourhood, the NRC will identify illegal migrants. The NPR is a database of citizens.
“We have been awaiting a meeting with CM Thackeray. If he gives us an appointment, we are willing to meet him and speak to him about the concerns of our community. When we met Pawar saheb last week, he assured us that the Congress and NCP are with us, but we need to speak to the Shiv Sena. If they are together in a government, the Shiv Sena should agree with the ideologies of their coalition partner,” said Chayanika Shah, queer activist. “The NPR and NRC would be problematic for queer and transidentified people, considering most of them have left their families behind and do not have any documents to prove their identity.” Representatives of tribals, women groups, slum dwellers and ragpickers, too, expressed similar concerns. The development comes days after CM Thackeray said NRC-NPR is well thought of and no one needs to fear CAA, suggesting that he was in favour of implementing the CAA, NRC-NPR. Last week, he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi.shweta Damle from Platform for social justice, who spoke on behalf of slum dwellers, said the consequences of implementation of NPR in the state would be grave. “In a city like Mumbai, 45% of the residents are slum dwellers and their legal status for documentation is negligible, especially because they are migrants. With frequent migration and their houses prone to calamities, it would become very difficult to provide documents,” said Damle. Most of them said the issue was beyond one community and the Centre was trying to exclude all minorities at once.
We have been awaiting a meeting with CM Thackeray. If he gives us an appointment, we are willing to meet him. CHAYANIKA SHAH, queer activist