Union Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy on Sunday challenged Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to show if there was anything in the Citizenship Amendment Act that affected anyone in the country.
Talking to reporters at the BJP office after the Republic Day celebrations, Mr. Reddy took exception to Mr. Rao’s criticism of the NDA government over the CAA issue. He was reacting to Mr. Rao’s statement of Saturday that the State Assembly might pass a resolution against the CAA as did some other States recently.
Mr. Reddy condemned Mr. Rao’s announcement that the State government would not implement CAA in Telangana and challenged him to show if there was anything in the Act that affected any one of the 130 crore people in the country. Mr. Rao or his TRS did not have the moral right to criticise the BJP on the matter, he said.
BJP State president K. Laxman said Mr. Rao had joined the Congress in opposing the CAA with “unfounded doubts and ill-motives.” The BJP’s stand that the Congress and TRS were similar was vindicated now.
Earlier in Republic Day celebrations, Mr. Reddy said the rival parties had taken up a false campaign against the BJP on the CAA issue. Their opposition to the National Population Register as part of the 2021 census was equal to opposing reservations to SCs and STs. All State governments were bound to implement census work as it was a statutory responsibility. It was unfortunate that even the census collection was being politicised.
