As the Parliament gets ready to debate and vote on the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019, the Congress and the Left Parties have made their stand clear and said that they will oppose the amendment. The amendment proposes to grant Indian citizenship to those communities who have been persecuted in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. These include Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Christians, and Parsis apart from Hindus from these Muslim countries.
Congress has opposed the amendment terming it as ‘communal’ and has said that it is against the idea of ‘secular’ India. However, much to the chagrin of the Congress party and its spokespersons, it has come to light that former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh had himself requested the government of the day to grant citizenship to minorities, who are facing persecution, in neighboring countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan.
In December 2003, Dr. Manmohan Singh who was the Leader of the Opposition when Atal Behari Vajpayee was the PM had asked the BJP government for a ‘liberal’ approach and grant citizenship to persecuted minorities in neighboring countries. His statement made on 18th December, 2003 are on record and available in the Parliament archives. The text of Dr. Manmohan Singh’s statement is as below:
LK Advani who was the Deputy Prime Minister and was present in the Rajya Sabha had endorsed the statement of Dr. Manmohan Singh.
The past statement of former PM will now haunt the Congress as it has decided to oppose the amendment to the Citizenship Bill. It now has to either support the bill which does exactly what Dr. Manmohan Singh requested years ago or disown its own leader and former PM.
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