Citizen Amendment Act exploited for votes

A GREAT deal of misinformation, lies and propaganda about the Citizenship Amendment Act in India and the National Register of Citizens is being spread by certain people of a particular persuasion.

The Citizenship Amendment Act is aimed at giving citizenship to people belonging to the minority faiths in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

They fled persecution and gross human rights violations in those countries and are living in refugee camps in India.

They have been doing so since or before December 31, 2014.

Why should members of the majority community from those countries, and who were responsible for the persecution of these refugees in the first place, be given Indian citizenship?

This is especially so since there are no refugees from the majority communities from these three countries living in refugee camps in India.

This category does not include people who are in the country illegally, with certain nefarious agendas or for any other reason.

The opposition parties have politicised the citizenship issue, hoping to build up their vote bank which included people mainly from one minority group in India.

In this so-called secular country, when the Congress was in power, in early December 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, said that X community “…must have the first claim on the resources of the country”.

Of course, the community singled out was a faith-based community.

Other minorities were left out.

In July 2018, Rahul Gandhi confirmed that his party was for X minority community.

But as the party continued to lose voters, Sonia Gandhi made an aboutturn during the 2019 campaigning and said there was a misconception that the Congress was a party only for one sectarian group, the X community.

She declared it was for all communities. Congress still fared badly in the election.

So now they have reverted to the earlier policy and are going full steam to win back the X community.

Exploiting the Citizen Amendment Act to woo again their vote bank does not matter to the fake Gandhis.

SANU SINGH Reservoir Hills