New Delhi
Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said that when the NRC is implemented it would be “very smooth” and would not affect any citizen. He was speaking at a press conference on Friday to brief journalists on the United Nations Conference of Parties that recently concluded in Madrid.
Responding to questions on the Citizenship Amendment Act , Mr. Javadekar said that the country was united in its resolve to keep illegal migrants out of the country and only a “section of people” was trying to deceive the country. “We are seeing people being persecuted in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and this Act is for them. They’ve been here for 20 years without citizenship. There was a similar law passed in 2003 by Atal Bihari Vajpayee to give shelter to Hindus from Pakistan. All subsequent governments have endorsed this. Our law only widens the ambit for the other persecuted (Buddhists, Jain, Parsis and Sikh).”
To a question from The Hindu on why Muslims were excluded he said that Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan were Islamic states and therefore Muslims there “can’t be persecuted on religious grounds”.
He condemned West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s proposal for a referendum. “Who is the United Nations to conduct a referendum on a law passed by Parliament? Mamata Banerjee should apologise.”
At the Conference of Parties, he said India was lauded for its stance on tackling climate change. “We were among the top five countries lauded for our performance on meeting our climate goals. This included praise from the United Nations Environment Programme, and Carbon Tracker (a research group).”
The 25th edition of the COP that concluded in Madrid was widely held to be disappointing after negotiators from 190 plus countries failed to make headway on finalising a rule book that would guide how the world would operationalise the Paris Agreement. This 2015 Agreement commits countries to strive to keep temperatures from rising over 1 degree Celsius by the end of the century. However countries like India and China have pressed for carbon credits, collected from previous agreements, to be made eligible for trading in carbon markets. They have also pressed developed countries to make good a trillion dollars promised as adaptation aid, as well as technology. None of these decisions made headway.
