NEW DELHI: A group of eminent citizens, including former judges and activists, have sought support for their campaign opposing the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), 2019, and the proposed all-India NRC.
Terming the campaign as “Stand Up for the Constitution #Scrap CAB 2019 #NoNRC”, they said citizenship in India is based on the non-negotiable principles of equality and non-discrimination.
Among those behind the social media campaign are former Supreme Court justice P B Sawant, former Bombay High Court judges Hosbet Suresh and BG Kolse Patil, human rights activists Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand, poet and screen writer Javed Akhtar, senior advocates Mihir Desai, and bureaucrat-turned-activist Harsh Mander.
“For the first time there is a statutory attempt to not just privilege people from some faiths but at the same time relegate another, Muslims, to second-rate status. The proposed amendments to the 1955 citizenship law need to be strongly rejected on these counts alone, in that they are divisive and discriminatory in character,”a statement by them said.
They said the government wanted to replicate an Assam-like trauma on the whole country. “While the government has decreed that the NPR survey will begin from April 2020, there has been no public debate, in Parliament or elsewhere, on the criteria of inclusion and exclusion within this ‘register’,” the statement said.