CAA Unconstitutional, Challenge to Idea of India: Kerala CM; Attacks Cong for Silence on Issue – News18

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday claimed that the CAA was “unconstitutional”, against human rights, and posed a challenge to the idea of India and attacked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi asking why he was silent on the issue. At a press conference here, Vijayan also alleged that the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) grants legal validity to religious discrimination.

Accusing the Congress and its top leaders of withdrawing from a united front against the CAA, the chief minister said the party and its national president Mallikarjun Kharge were yet to comment on the recent notification of the Act’s rules. “So far, neither the Congress party nor its national president have officially spoken a word against this communal law. On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi, who is on the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, has not even pretended to have heard about it.

“Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has not been able to take a strong stand against the CAA. Only a short note was put up on the social media platform X to make it appear like he had said something,” Vijayan said. Vijayan alleged that the Congress was playing a “hypocritical game of hide and seek” and hence was repeatedly proving itself to be unreliable.

Further intensifying the attack on the Congress on the issue, the Chief Minister said that K C Venugopal, the AICC general secretary for organizational affairs and candidate from Kerala in the coming Lok Sabha polls, was only concerned about the timing of the notification. “Doesn’t this mean that the Congress has no problem with the implementation of the CAA? The only problem was the timing. He (Venugopal) repeatedly asks why this delay,” the Marxist veteran said.

Even Jairam Ramesh, AICC general secretary in-charge of communications, only criticised the central government’s move by terming the notification as a polarizing attempt by the BJP before the elections and did not touch on the politics behind the legislation, he said. On the other hand, the LDF and the Left government in the state have, right from the start, repeatedly announced that the CAA is unconstitutional, anti-humanitarian, part of the BJP’s communal agenda and will not be implemented in Kerala, Vijayan said.

In order to ensure this, the state Cabinet in a meeting yesterday decided to take legal measures against the CAA rules notified by the Centre, he said. Criticising the legislation, Vijayan said that the Act was against the essence of the Indian Constitution, a challenge to the idea of India and sought to divide people on religious lines.

“This is part of the extreme Hindutva agenda of the Sangh Parivar. This heinous act of the Sangh Parivar to gain electoral advantage through divisive politics is being questioned internationally. Criticism has been raised about the discriminatory nature of the law, including from the United Nations,” he said. The CM said that the Act was a “flagrant violation” of the values enshrined in the Constitution as a particular religious belief was being made a condition for determining citizenship.

“This is the politics of exclusion. Muslim minorities are being treated as second class citizens,” he alleged, adding that “the Act was in violation of Articles 14, 21 and 25 of the Constitution of India and secularism, the fundamental principle of the Constitution”. He said that by dividing immigrants into Muslims and non-Muslims, India was trying to “legalise religious discrimination which was against the constitutional ethos it has always upheld”.

“If the goal is to protect persecuted minorities in neighbouring countries, why not include persecuted Muslim religious minorities in those countries also under the Act? The real purpose of CAA is to make illegal the citizenship of immigrant Muslims,” Vijayan said. He also alleged that the Sangh Parivar has “strong communal goals” for 2025, the 100th anniversary of the formation of the RSS, and that the CAA was a bridge to that.

Vijayan made it clear that the Left Front and the LDF government in Kerala will not retreat from their agitation against the CAA. “The LDF-led Kerala government will be at the forefront of this fight. The assurance that the struggle will continue at any cost is reiterated once again. We will not bend our knees nor will we be silent,” he said.

In response to reporters’ queries about the cases being faced by those who had protested against the CAA in 2019, the CM said that of the 835 such cases, 629 have been disposed of. Of the remaining 206, the government has already agreed to withdraw 84 and now the courts have to decide on that.

“Only one case is under investigation,” he said, adding that only after an application to withdraw a case is made can the government act. His statement came in the wake of criticism from Leader of Opposition V D Satheesan who said that the CM should show some “sincerity” to the cause by withdrawing the cases against those who participated in the anti-CAA protests in 2019.

The CAA was passed in December 2019 and subsequently got the President’s assent, but there were protests in several parts of the country against it, with many opposition parties speaking out against the law, calling it “discriminatory”. The Act grants citizenship to undocumented migrants of all religions — except Muslims — from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who arrived in India before December 31, 2014.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – PTI)