Chennai: The Tamilnadu Assembly today adopted a resolution urging the Centre to scrap the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The resolution moved by Chief Minister M K Stalin was unanimously passed by voice vote, amid a walk out by the principal opposition AIADMK and its ally, the BJP.
Stalin said the DMK had been opposing the CAA right from the start and it was against the secular principles of the Constitution and plurality of the country.
Observing that CAA discriminates people on religious lines and affects the spirit of unity of the country, he also urged the Union goverment to drop plans to preparing the National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) on the basis of CAA.
Stalin said religion is not a base for getting citizenship and no law can be brought based on religious lines.
Pointing out that the CAA was against the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Chief Minister said refugees should be looked at as human beings and questioned the need for a law like CAA when people are living harmoniously.
Opposing the resolution, BJP Legislature Party leader Nainar Nagendran said the law is not against Muslims living in India. “Minority Hindus, Sikhs and Parsis are threatened in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Hence, they are coming to India. There is nothing against Muslims in the CAA”.
He also said that Tamilnadu unit of the BJP will be the first to raise the issue if Muslims are threatened and walked out of the House along with other BJP members opposing the resolution.
Earlier, AIADMK members walked out of the House before Stalin moved the resolution stating that they were not allowed to raise another issue.
Later, talking to outside the Assembly premises House, AIADMK leaders accused the ruling DMK of shelving various schemes of the previous regime.
After the walk out by AIADMK, Leader of the House and Water Resources Minister Duraimurugan said, ‘Now you know why they (AIADMK) walked out of the House. They don’t have the courage to oppose the resolution.’
Intervening, Stalin said ‘They (AIADMK) did not have the heart and courage to support the resolution.’
It may be recalled that the DMK had all along opposed the CAA and campaigned against it. He had also launched a campaign in collecting one crore signatures demanding scrapping of the law.
The DMK in its election manifesto had stated that it would adopt a resolution in the Assembly and will urge the Centre to withdraw the CAA.
The Centre had brought amendments to the Citizenship Act, 1955 and enacted the CAA-2019 enabling citizenship to religious minorities (Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians) who were persecuted in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and arrived in India before December 2014.