All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief Asaduddin Owaisi has warned of Shaheen Bagh-like protests if the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is not rolled back like the three farm laws that were repealed last week.
“I demand the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act ,” the Hyderabad MP said in Barabanki, near Lucknow, in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.
READ: Cabinet to discuss farm law withdrawal on November 24
“If the government makes the law on the National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), then we will hit the streets again, we will make Shaheen Bagh here too. I myself would come here,” Owaisi is heard in a video saying in his address to a crowd.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on November 19 that the government will repeal the three contentious farm laws introduced last year that led to a massive protest of farmers, especially in Punjab and Haryana.
The CAA that was notified on December 12, 2019 and came into force on January 10, 2020, had triggered widespread protests in different parts of the country, including in Shaheen Bagh area of North East Delhi. The protests were ended after the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020.
Also read: Explained | What are the three farm laws and what made them controversial?
The CAA is aimed at granting Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities – Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians – from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Owaisi’s AIMIM will be contesting 100 seats out of the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Several politicians like BSP’s Amroha MP Kunwar Danish Ali, too, have demanded immediate revoking of the CAA.
Repealing 3 #FarmLaws is a welcome move. I congratulate farmers for their will power to fight, sacrifice and defeat the mighty state power and and their crony capitalist friends. @narendramodi ji must also consider and repeal Citizenship Amendment Act #CAA without further delay.
— Kunwar Danish Ali (@KDanishAli) November 19, 2021
“Repealing three farm laws is a welcome move. I congratulate farmers for their will power to fight, sacrifice and defeat the mighty state power and their crony capitalist friends. Prime Minister Modi must also reconsider and repeal CAA ‘without further delay’,” Ali tweeted.
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Several Muslim organisations have urged the government to repeal the CAA. Jamiat president Maulana Arshad Madani lauded the farmers for their “success” and claimed that the agitation against the CAA had encouraged them to protest the farm laws. Darul Uloom Deoband spokesman Maulana Sufiyan Nizami said the government should take back the CAA for harmony and peace in society.
The announcement of repealing the farm laws has also revived the groups against CAA in Assam with a protest planned on December 12. A few organisations have decided to revive the anti-CAA protests that turned violent and claimed the lives of at least five people in police firing in December 2019, a report in The Hindu said.
These organisations include the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) led by activist-turned-MLA Akhil Gogoi, and the Asom Jatiya Parishad, a political party.
Also read - Industry view on farm laws repeal: Some say not much impact, others rue lost opportunity
“We must make the Centre scrap the CAA, which is a serious threat to the identity of the indigenous communities in the North East, besides being against the Constitution,” AASU Advisor Samujjal K Bhattacharya told reporters on November 20.
Some politicians have also demanded restoration of Article 370 of Jammu and Kashmir. The article granting special status to the erstwhile state was abrogated in 2019.
Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi reacted, saying that a “political drama” around the issue has begun with demands to repeal the CAA. “Somebody says CAA should be repealed, abrogation of Article 370 should be scrapped,” he said in Moradabad, according to a report by news agency ANI.
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