Chennai : Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Tuesday said that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) only “creates division” and would not be implemented in the southern Indian state.
“The BJP government’s divisive agenda has weaponised the Citizenship Act, turning it from a beacon of humanity to a tool of discrimination based on religion and race through the enactment of CAA. By betraying Muslims and Sri Lankan Tamils, they sowed seeds of division,” Stalin said in a statement on X.”
Despite staunch opposition from democratic forces like the DMK, the CAA was passed with the support of BJP’s stooge ADMK. Fearing backlash from the people, the BJP kept the act in cold storage. After DMK came to power in 2021, we passed a resolution in TNLA urging the Union Government to repeal the CAA to safeguard the unity of our nation, uphold social harmony, and protect the ideal of secularism enshrined in our constitution,” said the chief minister who heads the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).
Stalin also questioned the notification of the CAA rules more than four years after Parliament passed the legislation in December 2019.
“Now, as elections loom, Prime Minister Modi seeks to salvage his sinking ship by cynically resurrecting the Citizenship Amendment Act, exploiting religious sentiments for political gain. However, the people of India will never forgive the BJP for unleashing this divisive Citizenship Amendment Act and their spineless lackeys, the ADMK, who shamelessly supported it. People will teach them a befitting lesson,” Stalin wrote on X.
Earlier on Monday, soon after the implementation of the CAA was notified, the chief minister slammed the BJP government at the Centre for doing so in haste when the Lok Sabha elections are around the corner.
The CAA rules, introduced by the Narendra Modi government and passed by Parliament in 2019, aim to confer Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants – including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Christians – who migrated from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and arrived in India before December 31, 2014.