After Kerala, Punjab Govt to Move Resolution Against Citizenship Amendment Act in Assembly Today

Chandigarh

After Kerala, the Punjab Assembly is all set to bring a resolution demanding removal of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, official sources said. A minister would move a resolution on the second day of the two-day special session of the Assembly urging the Centre to repeal the Act, the sources said. Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had on Thursday not ruled out the possibility of bringing a resolution against the amended citizenship law. “Wait till tomorrow,” Singh had said when asked by reporters if the government will bring in a resolution, on the lines of Kerala, against the Act.

The state Congress government had on Tuesday said it will proceed according to the “will of the House” on the issue of CAA, National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR). Singh had recently said his government would not allow the implementation of the “brazenly divisive CAA”. Reacting to the development, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said he commended the Punjab Assembly for considering to move the resolution to repeal the CAA.  After a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, his colleagues in the ministry had expressed concern over the implications of the “blatantly unconstitutional and divisive CAA, NRC and NPR.”

“The ministers were of the view that the matter was bound to be raised during the two-day session of the assembly on January 16-17 and it was unanimously decided that the government should accept the will of the House,” an official statement had said. Singh had said neither he nor the Congress were against granting citizenship to minorities persecuted on the basis of religion but they were completely opposed to the “discrimination in the CAA against certain religious communities, including Muslims”. Earlier in December 2018, the Kerala Assembly had recently passed a resolution demanding the scrapping of the controversial law, becoming the first state in the country to do so. It asked the Centre to cancel the contentious legislation that has triggered countrywide protests. The resolution was supported by all the MLAs except BJP’s O Rajagopal.