Days after Home Minister Amit Shah told the Rajya Sabha that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) will be extended to the entire country and repeated in Assam, the Trinamool Congress said that it had warned the government that the exercise will turn out to be “anti-Indian citizen.”
Parliamentary party leader Derek O’ Brien said that Mr. Shah realised only three days back that the NRC exercise has to be repeated in Assam while the Trinamool had warned three years back about its pitfalls.
The BJP government in Assam has already been demanding scrapping of the register prepared so far.
“The Trinamool’s position has been consistent. Three years ago (2016) we emphatically said, NRC is a big disaster in the making. Three days ago the BJP honchos have been compelled to junk the NRC in Assam,” Mr. O’ Brien told The Hindu . He added that the NRC is an “anti-Indian citizen”.
A select committee on Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) 2018, was constituted in August 2016. Mr. O’ Brien and Trinamool’s Lok Sabha MP Saugata Roy were both members of the committee. In their dissent note while opposing the CAB, they sought to secularise it by proposing omission of the names of the six minority communities and the countries mentioned. The Bill while explicitly omitting Muslims, seeks to provide citizenship to six “persecuted minorities” Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Buddhists from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
