Sharad Pawar draws parallels between Citizenship Amendment Act and Emergency

Amid the ongoing nationwide protest, the Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday said that the opposition parties may unite on the contentious issues of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens and regulation of social media. This statement of Pawar comes after a joint delegation of major opposition parties, met the President of India against the CAA on Tuesday in Delhi.

Pawar indicated that if the parties stay together and the present agitation continues then they will decide the direction for a change of power in the country. He also compared the current situation of India to the all India movement against the anti-Emergency agitation in 1977 which led to a change in power.

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'Emergency like situation'

Pawar said, “Can’t say anything at this moment. The protests haven’t remained restricted to minorities. I gather others have also joined it. I recollect that in 1977, a similar protest had later gathered momentum across the country and led to the change of government. So the possibility of a setback for BJP in view of the ongoing agitation against CAA cannot be ruled out,’’ he opined.

Speaking about the states opposing the implementation of CAA Pawar said that Centre may put those states under President’s Rule. He said, "They (Centre) will have to take recourse to Article 356. But there too, there are several verdicts of Supreme Court and the government will be able to do anything only in accordance with those rulings.”

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'Shah & Modi firm on decision'

Lastly speaking about the public protest and whether the government will rethink on the new citizenship law, Pawar said, “As can see, both (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi and (Home Minister Amit) Shah are very firm on implementing it.”

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About CAA and NRC

NRC is a register containing the names of Indian citizens, which was prepared for the only time in 1951 and is being updated only for Assam to weed out illegal immigrants. 

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, was approved by Parliament in its recently concluded winter session and became an act after Presidential assent. The Act seeks to grant Indian citizenship to refugees from Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Parsi communities fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh and who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.

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