Telangana to pass anti-Citizenship Amendment Act resolution, appeals Centre to repeal new law

Amid the ongoing protests in different parts of the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), the Telangana government on Sunday (February 16) has decided to pass a resolution against the CAA.

The decision to pass a resolution against the CAA in the upcoming state assembly session was taken at a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. It may be recalled that in January, KCR had said that Telangana would soon pass a resolution against the CAA. Doing it would make Telangana the sixth state after Kerala, Punjab, Rajastha, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, and the Union Territory of Puducherry to pass anti-CAA resolution.

The Telangana cabinet has also urged the BJP-led government at the Centre to abrogate the CAA and not discriminate on the basis of religion for according citizenship. "It requested that all religions must be treated as equal before the law. The cabinet further requested the central government to take measures to abrogate the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which will lead to discrimination on the basis of religion while granting citizenship and thereby jeopardising secularism envisaged in the Constitution. Cabinet decided to pass the resolution to this effect in the state assembly the way Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan and West Bengal states did," Telangana cabinet said in a statement.

Notably, Telangana's cabinet to pass an anti-CAA resolution came on the day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that his government would not do any rethink on the new legislation, noting that his government will remain firm on the steps despite intense pressure from several quarters.

"Be it the scrapping of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir or the CAA, the country waited for decisions on these for years," PM Modi said in Varanasi.

The Citizenship Amendment Act grants citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who fled religious persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and took refuge in India on or before December 31, 2014.