We Oppose CAA, NRC and NPR because It is against the Constitution – Congress
Mangaluru: The District Congress Party organized a workshop for the protection of Citizenship against CAA, NRC and NPR for the party workers at the Cordel Hall, Kulshekar here on February 6.
The programme began with an invocation. District Congress President Harish Kumar welcomed the gathering.
In her keynote address National President of Priyadarshini squad, All India National Women’s Congress Kavya Narasimha Murthy said, “Protests are being held everywhere against the CAA, NRC and NPR but if we only go on protesting, the ruling party will implementing divisive policies and new laws every day. To stop the NRC and CAA from being implemented we need to fight unitedly highlighting the failures of the ruling party. Many may think that they may not be affected by the CAA, NRC or NPR and keep away from protesting against it. The congress should fight against the CAA concentrating on three approaches. We cannot fight against divisive politics by fighting only against the CAA and NRC. We need to expose the government’s failures, their divisive politics and continue our protests against the CAA, NCR and NPR.”
Addressing the gathering Kavya said, “As we all know census is being done every 10 years but this time along with the census they will add NPR too. There are some extra questions in the NPR which are different than those in the census. The individual data collected during the census is not given to the government, but information on only the number of people in the country and what caste they belong to. The data collected during the census cannot be accessed by anyone. But now since they are adding NPR, anyone can access our personal data and officers can display our data which is very dangerous. Anyone who doesn’t like a person can go and tell the government that such a person does not belong to this country and they will be considered as doubtful citizens. Those doubtful persons will be called and asked to provide their documents to prove their citizenship.”
Kavya further said, “NRC has been implemented in Assam and out of the 3 crore population 19 lakh have been excluded from the list. The BJP thought that with NRC they can put the Muslims out from the state. But their calculation went wrong and they found that out of the 19 lakh people nearly 13 lakh excluded from the list were Hindus. So they brought the CAA to give citizenship to minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Why did the government include Afghanistan? According to the BJP, Hindus had gone to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh during the partition. What is the connection between partition and Afghanistan? Why is citizenship not given to Tamil Hindus from Srilanka? The government is showing selective humanity. In Assam they spent Rs 1600 crore to implement NRC, if they implement NRC throughout the country it will cost Rs 76000 crore. The government has so far not been clear on what documents are needed for NRC. In Assam, the Aadhar card, Voter ID and passport are not valid for NRC. Using the voter ID the people of Assam voted and they came to power, but now for NRC, the voters’ ID is not valid. The passport is considered in every country as proof of being a citizen of this country but it is not valid in our own country. In our country, more than 125 crore people have Aadhar card which is not valid. Recently during the floods, many people lost their documents but the government is asking them the land documents, birth certificates of parents and the voter ID before 1971.”
Kavya also said, “The government is privatizing the LIC which is the biggest profit-making company. Many have invested in the LIC but now since the government has no funds it has started to sell LIC shares. LIC is a service-oriented company that the government is now privatizing. Air India has already been privatized, 55000 jobs in BSNL which was a profit-making company are in danger. HAL has no money to pay for the salary. The Postal department is at a loss of Rs 15000 crores, ONGC is running on loss. 36 capitalists have fled the country taking huge loans from government banks. Poor people who have deposited their savings in the banks cannot withdraw their money. Modi had assured of creating 2 crore jobs every year but in reality, 4.5 crore people have lost their jobs. 5 airports have been sold to Adani, the Dollar is all-time high against Rupee, the Railways made the least profit in the year 2018-19. The government utilized Rs 1.76 crore from RBI. The price for onion skyrocketed and poor people were affected. Next, the middle and the upper-middle-class will be affected by inflation. The government is trying to privatize JNU which is a government university by hiking the fees because of which students are protesting. Then there is the electoral bonds scam, 95% of the funds have come to the BJP through electoral bonds. We should see that all this information reaches the people of this country. In the hunger index, our country has slipped down to 102nd place from 97th place. In the Democracy index, we are in 51st place while we were in the 21st place earlier. Through the Beti Bachao Beti Padao scheme, 56% of the funds were utilized for Modi’s publicity. How can we send girls to school when there is no safety for them? Every 15 minutes one girl in our country is raped and 40 girls are sexually abused in an hour and the BJP is talking about Beti Bachao. America and Britan have issued a warning to their female citizens to be careful while visiting India. Is this the respect our country gets? Earlier we used to get the warning about diseases while visiting some countries. In 2015 they won the elections because of the airstrike after the Pulwama attack, but in Ladakh, our soldiers do not get suitable food and sleeping bags. Adityanath says Modiji ka Sena from where did Modiji ka sena come? Is it Patriotism ?”
“The BJP is creating fear among the people. Terrorism has no religion they only want to create fear among the people. They go with the guns at the place of protest so that protestors will fear and stop participating in the protests. Those who are involved in crime are from poor families. Amit Shah’s son Jayesh will not hold a gun in his hand, but the youth from poor families listen to the inciting speeches of their leaders and involve crime. BJP MP Anantkumar sais that Gandhiji’s freedom struggle was a drama. I ask MP Anantkumar did Godse participate in the freedom fight? In Karnataka we have 25 MPs, recently during the floods, many people lost their assets. Not one MP brought funds for Karnataka because they all won in Modi’s name, people voted for Modi and not for the candidate. Did any of the 25 MPs have the guts to stand in front of Modi and demand funds for Karnataka? Those who praise Modi their qualification increase and they will get a ministerial berth. Recently the finance minister Nirmala Seetharaman called a free budget consultation and she was not present. We can see whose voice matters. Modiji tweeted the photos of the Budget consultation with Economic Experts but we did not see any Economic Experts in budget consultation there were only capitalists present. Speaking and protesting against CAA, NRC and NPR are not enough, we should expose the failures of BJP and their political culture. People will understand only if we expose their failures”, stressed Kavya.
Ex-Member, Karnataka Legislative Council B L Shankar and AICC Secretary Vishnunath also spoke on the occasion. Former ministers Ramanath Rai, U T Khader and Abhaychandra Jain, former MLAs J R Lobo, Shakuntala Shetty and Moideen Bava, MLC Ivan D’Souza, Mamatha Gatti, Suresh Ballal and others were also present.