CAA not against Muslims or any other religion: Ram Madhav

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was not against Muslims or any other religion in the country, said BJP national general secretary V Ram Madhav here on Friday.

“There is no need for anyone in the country to panic because of CAA,” he said while delivering a talk organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) at Tagore Auditorium in Osmania University.

The CAA was meant for providing Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities such as Hindus from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who came to India as refugees prior to December 2014.

It is not against anyone including Muslims, he said and urged people not to believe in the false information spread by the opposition parties. The AICC president Sonia Gandhi and singer Adnan Sami became Indian nationals after citizenship was granted to them under certain rules.

Madhav said the parties opposing CAA were not aware of the facts of the Act and were not even making an attempt to know the facts. “These parties are knowledge-proof like we used to have water-proof watches,” he



quipped.

The opposition parties opposing CAA were trying to divide the country on communal lines as they were unable to face the Prime Minister Narendra Modi politically, he said and added that a large number of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians came to India after Bangladesh was declared Islamic nation and had been living for the past few decades in India.

As per 1993 US State Department’s data, there are 44 lakh refugees in India, he said. In the last 10 years, the situation in Bangladesh was improving and after Sheik Hasina became the Prime Minister, some positive steps were taken with regard to minorities rights in that country resulting in a dip in number of refugees coming to India from there.

Madhav urged the Muslim community not to fall prey to the disinformation campaign carried out by some opposition parties. The Centre has only implemented the promise made by the former Prime Ministers late Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi to the refugees who came to India from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, he added.