A group of eminent citizens on Monday asked the government to repeal the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and withdraw the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) to break the cycle of protests and “harsh countermeasures”.
In a statement, the Concerned Citizens Group, led by former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, former Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak (retired) and journalist Bharat Bhushan, said the youth-led protests against the CAA and the NRC had been met with “unduly harsh measures by the state”, which led to the death of more than two dozen people.
Wrong signals
“The core message the protesters have conveyed to the government is that the CAA, founded on the religious basis of citizenship, is aimed against the nation’s principal minority, violates its rights and upends the fundamentals of India’s constitutional nationhood. It is unlikely that the protests would die down over time,” the statement read.
The group said the government had underestimated the external fallout of the policy and there was a need to counter the increasing negative perception of domestic policies internationally.
“We are bewildered by the ruling dispensation, so early in its second term, opting to embark on its ideological pursuit of ‘shock and awe’ by amending Article 370, abrogating Article 35A, breaking up Jammu and Kashmir State into two Union Territories and initiating the CAA-NRC combine when it was confronting a monumental challenge of an economy in a deep crisis,” the statement said.
The group asked the government to roll back the CAA-NRC policy as it would be the only way to break the “the cycle of peoples’ resistance and adoption of harsh counter-measures”.
The statement said the people of Jammu and Kashmir were still suffering. “The foremost fear shared by the people of Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh is a demographic change. The education sector continues to languish. Tourism is in tatters. Business and horticulture continue to suffer a huge loss. Civic facilities like electric supply have broken down. Kashmir is witnessing the longest information technology shut-down in history. Most fear that the ongoing civil disobedience could lead to a revival of violence,” it said.
The group said the government had promised to integrate Jammu and Kashmir more closely with the rest of the country while revoking the special status of the erstwhile State in August. “While there is no sign of that so far, certainly the government has succeeded in repressing the rest of India like Jammu and Kashmir,” it said.
