Waman Meshram, national convener of Bahujan Kranti Morcha, said on Tuesday that both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress were equally responsible for the problems being faced by minorities, Dalits and Adivasis over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the National Population Register (NPR).
He was speaking at the Kashmir to Kanyakumari nationwide Parivartan Yatra public meeting organised by the morcha at Town Hall here.
Mr. Meshram said that as far as their policies were concerned, both the BJP and Congress were like brothers. It was during the period of Congress rule that the NPR process had begun. The BJP was only carrying forward what the Congress started. But the CAA, NPR, and NCR were all targeted at the depressed classes and minorities.
It was impossible for the weaker sections of the society, especially the poor, to keep documents such as birth certificates ready with them. After all, the registration of births was made mandatory in the country only in 1969. “What should people in rural areas who were born before 1969 do? Many of them did not even know the dates that they were born on,” he said.
The CAA, NPR, and NRC were discriminatory. Outwardly, the Muslim community appeared to be targeted. “The BJP government at the Centre has actually trained its guns on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes by placing it on the shoulders of the Muslims. The real target of the CAA, NPR, and NRC is the ‘mool nivasi’ (original inhabitants) of this country,” he said.
“Again, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah outwardly appear to be implementing the CAA, NPR and NRC, the real mover behind these ‘black laws’ is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is pulling the strings from behind the curtain,” he said.
The way the Electronic Voting Machines were functioning gave a lot of room for suspicion. But there was not enough debate on this subject, Mr. Meshram said.
