Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and three-time Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, has slammed the citizenship( Amendment) Bill and said that it undermines the fundamental tenets of the Constitution.
“I think the bill is fundamentally unconstitutional because the basic idea of India has been violated in the bill. Those who believe that religion should determine nationhood… that was the idea of Pakistan, they created Pakistan. We have always argued that our idea of nation was what Mahatma Gandhi, Nehruji, Maluana Azad, Dr Ambedkar have said, that religion cannot determine nationhood,” Tharoor told reporters in Parliament premises.
“Ours is a country for everybody and everybody, irrespective of religion, has equal rights in this country, and the Constitution that they wrote reflected that. Today, this bill undermines this fundamental tenet of the Constitution,” he said.
Tharoor”s remarks came after the Union Cabinet gave its nod for the Bill that seeks to provide Indian nationality to Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
The Bill is now expected to be tabled in Parliament next week.
