CJP at the Azam college campus in Pune Public meeting held on NRC, NPR and CAB
08, Dec 2019 | CJP Team
On 7th December, a public meeting organised by Haji Gulam Mohammed Azam Education Trust saw an attendance of over 500 hundred people. CJP’s secretary, Teesta Setalvad, a key speaker at this meeting emphasized on the fact that a nationwide NRC/NPR is only being used to divide the country. She questioned how such an exercise can take place without a Parliamentary discussion. She went on to say that this is nothing but an assault on the citizenship of the poorest of Indians.
Citizenship has been defined as the right to have rights. Over the past six years, there have been clear political moves to fundamentally assault and redefine this Constitutional basis of both Indian nationhood and citizenship. Especially now, with the newly drafted proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 and a not thoroughly debated all India-level NPR-National Register of Citizens (NRC) process. CJP is urging people to understand, organise and fight back democratically. Let’s stand up for the Constitution of India. We must unequivocally reject CAB 2019 and at the same time in the same breath, NPR/NRC. For this we need your support.
The meeting went on for over 2 hours and saw a continuous flow of people. Two screens were arranged outside the Dr. AR Shaikh Hall to relay the speech to the crowd that was growing by the minute. An intensive question and answer session took place where CJP answered multiple queries.
The human and material costs to the most marginalized sections within Assam have been huge. Close to 100 deaths through suicide or trauma (in and out of Detention Camps) have been documented by CJP, 28 deaths in the camps alone. The fate of those excluded from citizenship is left to Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals (FTs) that have a poor and unprofessional record. What will the process of a nationwide NRC/NPR cost our country?
Related:
CJP’s awareness campaign on citizenship, the NPR-NRC-CAB dilemma
