More than a week after Narendra Modi attacked the CPI(M) for opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) after having supported citizenship for the victims of religious persecution in Bangladesh, the party has said the Prime Minister is trying to conflate the concern for the rights of the deprived to a “toxic policy of exclusion from citizenship rights”.
PM spreading untruths: Yechury
The party made the response in a booklet it has released. It is entitled, CAA, NRC and NPR: Ten Big Lies of the Modi Government.
Speaking at the Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on December 22, Mr. Modi said the former CPI(M) general secretary, Prakash Karat, had written to Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of that time, in support of citizenship for the victims of religious persecution in Bangladesh and had changed his stand now for “vote-bank politics”.
Conflated topics
Counting this assertion as one of the 10 lies, the booklet says, “It is wrong to conflate the concern for the rights of the deprived sections to a toxic policy of exclusion from citizenship rights as is being done by the Modi government.”
It further says the CPI(M) is opposed to any differentiation in the eligibility for citizenship on the basis of religion. Mr. Karat had written the letter, the booklet says, seeking that the “Namashudra Dalit” communities among the refugees from Bangladesh be declared a Scheduled Caste, a status that was not given to them in such BJP-ruled States as U.P., Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.
Another lie perpetuated by the government is that the CAA has nothing to do with the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The reason the CAA preceded the NRC is to establish the difference between refugees and infiltrators. “What is the difference between infiltrators and refugees? Only the Muslims do not qualify under the CAA as refugees, and are therefore infiltrators,” the booklet says. It quotes Home Minister Amit Shah’s speeches in and outside Parliament.
Quoting reports
The booklet says it is a blatant falsehood to say that the NPR and the NRC are not interconnected.
It points to the Home Ministry’s annual report for 2018-2019, which says, “The NPR is the first step towards creation of the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC)”. “So who is the liar? The Ministry of Home Affairs or the Minister of Home Affairs?” it asks.
