Drop NPR work, Cong-led Oppn directs non-BJP CMs

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 13

Upping the ante on the Citizenship Amendment Act, the Congress-led Opposition today adopted a resolution against the CAA, National Register of Citizens and National Population Register and urged 13 non-BJP Chief Ministers to stop the NPR process in their states.

“The CAA, NPR, NRC is a package that is unconstitutional and specifically targets the poor, downtrodden, SC/STs and the linguistic and religious minorities. The NPR is the basis for the NRC. We demand the withdrawal of the CAA and the immediate stoppage of nationwide NRC/NPR. All Chief Ministers, who have announced that they will not implement the NRC in their state, must consider suspending the NPR enumeration as this is a prelude to the NRC,” said 20 like-minded parties after a three-hour meeting in Parliament House annexe today.

The meeting attacked the government for employing “a divisive agenda” – abrogation of Article 370 in J&K and now CAA-NRC-NPR — to deflect attention from loss of livelihoods and appealed to people to sharpen their current resistance against the government by observing three important upcoming dates – January 23, the birthday of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose; January 26, Republic Day; and January 30, Mahatma Gandhi’s Martyrdom Day.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi led the anti-BJP offensive today when she told the gathering consisting of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ex-Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar among others that the real issue facing India today was the economic slowdown.

“The Prime Minister and Home Minister have no answers and want to divert the nation’s attention from this grim reality by raising one divisive and polarising issue after another. It is for us to thwart government’s designs,” she said.

PM does not have guts to speak to students on economy: Rahul

Rahul Gandhi, too, raked up the economy for his anti-PM Modi pitch. “The fact is that thousands of students of all religions and communities have come out. There is a feeling of anger and fear in students, in weaker sections, in farmers. The reason is that there’s a complete failure, absolute disastrous failure on the economic front and on the employment front, ” Rahul said. He challenged the PM to go to any university “without his police and tell the people what he is going to do for this country.” The resolution reflected the opposition parties’ urge to pull the narrative back from polarising issues to the declining growth and jobs. “...instead of addressing these issues and providing relief to the people, the BJP has embarked on a dangerous course of sharpening communal polarisation and attacking constitutional guarantees of the people,” said the resolution noting the “hasty” abrogation of Article 370 and the CAA’s passage “without meaningful deliberations in Parliament”.

Opposition leaders also said they stood by the recent “peaceful multi-religious, popular protests against the CAA, NRC and NPR”.

On the issue of apparent Opposition disunity, Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad and CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury said “some leaders may not have attended but everyone is united in the demand to repeal CAA and stop NPR.”

The larger Opposition is hoping to push the government to the wall by getting non-BJP CMs to stall the NPR exercise. “If 40 per cent of the states say no to NPR, how will the government push it? Let them dislodge all state governments. We will see,” an Opposition veteran said today.

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