BENGALURU: All India Congress Committee general secretary and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said if they had a few more votes in the Upper House, they would not have allowed passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB). Those who had supported the bill are now repenting, he said.
Addressing the media at the KPCC office in Bengaluru on Saturday, he said the bill got passed in the Lok Sabha as they did not have a majority. But in the Rajya Sabha, most of the opposition members had opposed the bill. “A few political parties from the opposition with few seats in the RS that supported the bill are now repenting. They are saying that they had committed a blunder by supporting the bill. We lost with in the Upper House by some seven to eight votes. If they had supported us, the bill would not have passed,’’ he said.
Nabi said in November 2016, the Modi government brought in demonitisation. Since then, most of the laws they passed were against the people. “Each bill they passed are controversial. With demonitisation, lakhs of small and medium companies shut down, creating more unemployment. Nobody is ready to invest now. All the promises the BJP made before election did not happen. Instead of that, they are diverting attention by polarising society in the name of religion. By bringing such bills, they have lost Haryana, Maharashtra, and now Jharkhand. Bring more such bills, more they will lose,’’ he said.