Janata Dal (United) vice president Prashant Kishor has challenged Home Minister Amit Shah to “try and implement” the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC).
“Being dismissive of citizens’ dissent couldn’t be the sign of strength of any Govt. @amitshah Ji, if you don’t care for those protesting against #CAA_NRC, why don’t you go ahead and try implementing the CAA & NRC in the chronology that you so audaciously announced to the nation!” Kishor said in a tweet on Wednesday morning.
This comes a day after Shah, at a rally in Lucknow, reiterated that CAA won’t be revoked. “We are not afraid of protests. In fact we were born amid protests, raised amid protests. We had said the same thing in Opposition and we are now saying same thing while in power,” Shah said. He also called for a public debate on the legislation.
{{/usCountry}}This comes a day after Shah, at a rally in Lucknow, reiterated that CAA won’t be revoked. “We are not afraid of protests. In fact we were born amid protests, raised amid protests. We had said the same thing in Opposition and we are now saying same thing while in power,” Shah said. He also called for a public debate on the legislation.
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The CAA fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from three neighbouring nations who entered India before December 31, 2014.
Protests against the law are continuing across the country, and it has also been legally challenged in the Supreme Court by several petitioners, including the state of Kerala. The southern state and Punjab have also moved resolutions against CAA.
Kishor has led the opposition to the amended citizenship law and NRC within his own party.
The support for the act in Parliament had led to a rift within the JD(U) with Prashant Kishor and Pavan Varma speaking out publicly against Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s decision to support it.
Soon after, Nitish Kumar was the first NDA chief minister to come out against the NRC.
Chief ministers of at least 11 states - Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Punjab, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Puducherry, Odisha, West Bengal and Kerala - have declared that they will not implement NRC.