HYDERABAD: At a time when protests for and against the CAA are turning violent, BJP general secretary P Muralidhar Rao sought to clear the air over the newly-enacted Act by conducting an open debate on the lawns of Centre for Cultural Resources and Training on Friday. Senior journalist and president of the Editors Guild of India Shekhar Gupta moderated the debate.
Muralidhar Rao made it clear that the Central government was only focussed on implementing the CAA and not the National Register of Citizens (NRC) or the National Population Register (NPR). He, however, maintained that his party was in favour of conducting NRC/NPR.
When asked how one could prove their citizenship if the dates of birth of their ancestors were insisted in the NRC/NPR undertaking, he said, “Do you think Narendra Modiji has a birth certificate? Do you think his mother has one? If and when we decide to implement the NRC, all the issues raised by the stakeholders will be addressed and a framework will be formulated. This will be subject to judicial scrutiny. If somebody moves court, the framework has to prove that the undertaking was in accordance with the Constitution. Otherwise, the entire exercise will fall apart.”
Drawing a parallel to warfare technology, Shekhar Gupta posed a question to the BJP leader: “Without NRC, the CAA will be like the Chandrayaan mission. But when the NRC is added to the equation, it will turn into a ballistic missile.” In response to this, Muralidhar Rao assured that no Indian citizen of would be affected by the CAA.