Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday appointed a Cabinet sub-committee to study issues related to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Population Register (NPR).
The committee will advise the Cabinet on the stand to be taken on these issues, he said in the Legislative Assembly. There was a lot of “unrest” on these issues in the country, he said.
The six-member committee will be headed by Parliamentary Affairs Minister and Shiv Sena leader Anil Parab. Its other members will be Housing Minister Jitendra Awhad, Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Vijay Wadettiwar, Sports Minister Sunil Kedar, Minority Affairs Minister Nawab Malik and Higher and Technical Education Minister Uday Samant.
Meanwhile, Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said in the Legislative Council on Thursday that there are no functional detention centres in Maharashtra. The land earmarked in Nerul, Navi Mumbai, is for detaining criminals who are foreign nationals and who cannot be deported, he said, in a written response to a query on the CAA.
Last month, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, and addressing the media later, had said there is nothing to worry about with regard to the CAA. However, the government has maintained that no decision on the implementation of the CAA, National Register of Citizens (NRC) or the NPR has been taken yet. The Congress has been aggressively demanding that the government not implement the CAA in the State and pass a resolution on those lines.
Congress legislator Sharad Ranpise had submitted a question on the CAA and NRC demanding to know whether it is true that, despite the Centre declaring that no detention centres are being built in the country, the Home Department wrote to CIDCO to make available the women’s police welfare centre’s building in Nerul for a detention centre. He also sought to know whether there have been any such instructions from the Centre.
Responding to his query, Mr. Deshmukh said this is not true. “No detention camp is being constructed in the State. The Union Home ministry had written a letter in 2014 to create a space wherein foreign nationals convicted of a crime and who have served their sentence but cannot be deported due to lack of clarity on their citizenship will need to be kept somewhere. That is why it had asked for the construction of these detention centres,” his reply said.
Also, on December 9, 2019, the Centre has created a manual for detention camps, it said. “That is why we have requested the Nerul space for a temporary detention centre and also asked for three acres of land in Navi Mumbai for a permanent detention centre. Currently, there is no detention centre in the State.”
The question did not come up for discussion during question hour.
Leader of the Opposition Pravin Darekar, however, tabled a proposal in Thursday’s agenda demanding implementation of the CAA in Maharashtra, to start the NPR process, and to take measures to dispel rumours related to these. The proposal did not come up for discussion.
( With PTI inputs )
