BJP will have to pay for stubbornness on CAA: Amarinder
Chandigarh: Taking former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan head on over the threat of the Centre implementing the Citizenship Amendment Act at any cost, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Wednesday said the BJP would have to pay a heavy price for such stubbornness.
An elected government which refuses to heed the voice of its people or respond to their anger is bound to lose their confidence and collapse, said the Chief Minister, adding the BJP’s stance on the issue “smacked of a dangerously fascist approach that would lead to their eventual downfall”.
As far as his government was concerned, “there was no way it would allow the brazenly divisive Act to be implemented in Punjab”, Amarinder Singh said.
“You cannot force us to do so,” he said, even as he reiterated that neither he nor the Congress was against grant of citizenship of persecuted minorities in other countries, such as Sikhs in Pakistan, but were completely opposed to the discrimination in the CAA against certain religious communities, including the Muslims.
Despite the nationwide public outrage over the controversial CAA, the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre was refusing to acknowledge the unconstitutionality of the legislation, said the Chief Minister, lashing out at Chouhan for his “shockingly inconsiderate remarks on the issue”.
It was obvious that Chouhan, like other BJP leaders, had no inkling of the implications or consequences of the CAA, nor did he apparently want to understand it, said Amarinder Singh in a reaction to the comments made by Chouhan in Ludhiana a day earlier.
Chouhan had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, nor had he bothered to study the Act, which has triggered massive public protests across the country, said the Punjab Chief Minister, adding that the protests were not “the brainchild of the Congressa or any other party, as Chouhan was claiming, but the result of a spontaneous outrage among Indians cutting across religious and party lines”.
