No One Can Remove CAA; Opposition Trying To Create Riot: Prime Minister Modi

After the government began granting Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today claimed that the opposition Samajwadi Party and Congress are trying to create riots by speaking lies about the law. The Prime Minister further asserted that no one can remove the CAA, despite the opposition claims that they will withdraw it. 

While speaking at an elections rally in Uttar Pradesh”s Lalganj, Prime Minister said that the job of providing citizenship under the CAA has started. The Prime Minister then noted that there are people who have been living in the country for a long time as refugees, and they are the victims of partition carried out based on religion.  The opposition is neglecting them, he alleged. 

The government had reportedly provided citizenship certificates to approximately 300 people on Wednesday. Notably, the CAA since its introduction in 2019 has been facing strong resistance and opposition from across the country. The law turned out to be controversial since it exclusively excluded Muslims while permitting all other religious groups to apply for citizenship.

Marking the first religion-based citizenship distribution, the current government passed the bill on the eve of the 2019 general elections. However, the government waited till the eve of another election in 2024 to enforce the law, raising questions about the potential vote bank politics behind what many claim a “discriminatory law.”

However, after the first distribution of the citizenship certificate yesterday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah termed the development  “historic” and a “fulfilment of Modi”s guarantee.” “Today, the wait of decades has ended, and through CAA, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian brothers and sisters who came to India from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan due to religious persecution have started getting Indian citizenship,” the Home Minister said. 

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