BJP shares Manmohan’s 2003 video to target Cong over CAA

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday highlighted a speech by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha in 2003, in support of

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday highlighted a speech by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha in 2003, in support of Indian citizenship for persecuted minorities from countries such as Bangladesh.

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The Congress has been among the many political parties opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act, passed last week, which fast tracks citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh that have sought refugee in India on account of religious persecution.

In the video, Singh, then Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, is speaking in the Upper House on December 18, 2003, during a discussion on the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2003.

“While I am on this subject, Madam, I would like to say something, about the treatment of refugees. After the partition of our country, the minorities in countries like Bangladesh, have faced persecution, and it is our moral obligation that if circumstances force people, these unfortunate people, to seek refuge in our country, our approach to granting citizenship to these unfortunate persons should be more liberal. I sincerely hope that the honourable Deputy Prime Minister (LK Advani) will bear this in mind in charting out the future course of action with regard to the Citizenship Act,” he said.

Singh’s remarks prompted the then Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson Najma Heptullah to comment, “Mr Advani, the minorities in Pakistan are also suffering. They have to be taken care of too.”

For his part, Advani, also in charge of the home ministry, said, “Madam, I fully endorse what the Leader of the Opposition said.”

BJP leader Sambit Patra said there was “hypocrisy” in the Congress position.

“Look at the hypocrisy of the congress ...18th December 2003 ..this is what Dr Manmohan Singh had to say about the persecution of the minorities in Pakistan & Bangladesh. Just compare this with there present stand! Classic case of “Then” & “Now”!!”, he tweeted.

However, the Congress said Singh’s remarks should be seen in the right context, even as it supported the cause of persecuted minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“It is more than abundantly clear now that the entire intent behind bringing the CAA in 2019, after a deeply flawed and divisive National Register of Citizens is to create a fictitious ‘other’, an ‘enemy’ against whom communal polarisation can be engineered. This was not the case in 2003 and Shri Advani was not then threatening people with a nationwide NRC exercise,” Congress spokesperson Pranav Jha said.

While protests against the CAA in the Northeast have been driven by fear that outsiders will take over jobs and land (the region has traditionally viewed outsiders with distrust), those in other parts of the country are based on the BJP’s articulated desire to implement a nationwide NRC to identify outsiders, with many seeing the CAA as providing a way out for the non-Muslims excluded from this exercise

“Now that the BJPs polarisation game is being exposed threadbare, it is doing what it does best, spreading half truths and selective out of context information. The aim is not to help minorities from three named countries, but ensuring communal polarisation,” Jha added.

He said the Congress party stands unequivocally with the persecuted religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.