'PM Modi, please come to Shaheen Bagh, collect your gift and talk to us'
Addressing a rally in support of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Kanpur, Adityanath said, "These people do not have courage to participate in the protests themselves. They know if they indulge in vandalism, their property will be seized. Now what have they done? "They started making the women sit at roads. The children have been made to sit. It's such a big crime that the men are sleeping under the quilt and the women are made to sit at roads. It is shameful," he said.
The Assam finance minister said that it is not possible for the person to go back to his country of origin and collect a copy of police report to show that he was subjected to religious persecution.
As the clock struck 12, the protesting crowd burst into a cheer to greet the fellow protesters the new year, and moments later broke into the national anthem in unison which was followed by the slogan 'Inquilab Zindabad'.
Press Council of India Chairman Markandey Katju on Sunday objected to a Supreme Court judge's statement that Gita and Mahabharat should be taught in schools, saying this is against India's secular feature and Constitution and will do it "great harm".
Anyone born in India before July 1, 1987 or whose parents were born before that date are bona fide Indian citizens according to law and need not worry due to the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 or a possible countrywide National Register of Citizens, a top government official said on Friday. According to the 2004 amendments of the Citizenship Act, people of the country, except those in Assam, whose one parent is an Indian and neither is an illegal immigrant are also considered Indian citizens.
The statement came after chief ministers of West Bengal, Punjab, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh announced that the law is "unconstitutional" and has no place in their respective states.
The contentious bill will be tables in RS on Wednesday. The BJP hopes to get up to 130 votes in a 240-member upper house.
Pakistan Foreign Office in a statement said the latest legislation by the Indian government was another major step towards the realisation of the concept of "Hindu Rashtra.
'With the Citizenship Amendment Bill, Hindus from Pakistan can come to India. They have got a way,' says Gurumukh Jagwani who came to India on his honeymoon, loved the country so much that he stayed back and got Indian citizenship.
Khan, who was the Chief Guest at the function, was addressing the delegates, when he touched upon the protests over CAA referred to by two earlier speakers. This led to the objections being raised by some delegates at the venue.
'We will do a holistic review of the entire act and the policy at the state level and I need to be convinced that not a single Jharkhandi is uprooted from his or her home due to this law'
The contentious citizenship bill is not applicable to areas under ILP regime. Dimapur was the only Nagaland district that was out of ILP so far.
The panel suggested changes in laws relating to marriage, divorce, alimony, and marriageable age for men and women.
The contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 (CAB), which generated widespread protests in the north-eastern states, is expected to be tabled in the Lok Sabha on Monday for consideration and passage.
On December 4, the Union Cabinet cleared the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan if they faced religious persecution there. The government intends to introduce bill in Parliament's Winter Session next week. What is this legislation and why is it contentious?
'The entire brouhaha with regard to the CAB smacks of blatant Hinduphobia, a duplicitous exercise, morally corrupt in its construct and aimed at divesting deserving Hindus of basic human rights by raising the bogey of Muslim discrimination, and must be called out for what it is,' says Vivek Gumaste.
On the lines of Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, around 50 women along with children have been squatting near the Clock Tower in Lucknow's old quarters. The women protesters alleged that blankets provided to them by some organisations were taken away by police. The police dismissed the allegations.
Shah assured members of minority communities that none of them will lose citizenship due to the CAA.
In a statement issued on Monday, the US Commission for International Religious Freedom said that it was deeply troubled over the passage of the bill in Lok Sabha.
The meetings with the chief ministers will be held on Saturday, an official said.
The Bill provides for according Indian citizenship to the the Hindus, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan after six years of residence in India instead of 12 years even if they do not possess any document.
'After a longish time being on the defensive on the Muslim issue, Mamata found in the Centre's surgical strike just the kind of battle in which she specialises -- hand-to-hand combat.' 'Having routed the once formidable Marxists by her trademark, no-holds-barred belligerence, she is now ready to employ the same tactics against the BJP,' predicts Amulya Ganguli.
The Centre has started a headcount of people of the minority community employed during the last one year in all its departments as part of review of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new 15-point programme for welfare of minorities.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Jain community was on Monday accorded minority status by the central government which will enable them to avail of benefits in government schemes and programmes.
'The NRC is thoroughly anti-poor and the CAA is thoroughly anti-Muslim.' 'And these two deadly combinations are going to hit us like how demonetisation and GST has hit the entire nation.'
The US lawmakers, describing themselves as "longtime friends of India", wrote in the letter that "more than six months after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government unilaterally revoked the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir, the government continues to block most internet in the region".
The senior Congress leader opined that the situation in Assam can now be divided into two phases -- pre-CAA and post-CAA, and it was necessary to unite all anti-CAA forces in order to protect the ethos of the Assam Accord.
Rajnath Singh also lashed out at Pakistan for the ongoing unrest in Kashmir, saying it was continuously trying to derail peace in the Valley.
Speaking at the Annual Prime Minister's National Cadet Corps Rally 2020, Modi said the problem in Jammu and Kashmir persisted since Independence and some families and political parties kept issues in the region "alive", as a result of which terrorism thrived there.
Akhil Gogoi, member of the legislative assembly from Sivasagar in Assam, is likely to be released from jail on Thursday as a special NIA court cleared him and his three associates of all charges under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for their alleged role in the violent anti-Citizenship Amendment Act stir in Assam in December 2019.
Those who withdrew called off the blockade on the Sarita Vihar-Kalindi Kunj road and alleged "politicisation" of their "peaceful protest".
The CAA does not change basic structure of Constitution, MEA spokesperson said at a media briefing.
If the process becomes completely online, there will be no intervention from a state government at any level.
He said there was no report of any untoward incident from anywhere in the state.
Shah said that the NPR will not affect the nationality status of any citizen of the country.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen said any 'uncertainty' over the issue in India is likely to affect its neighbours. The minister asserted that his country trusts India.
'Of course, I would like a world in which candidates don't ask for my vote on religious (etc) grounds.' 'But will we ever live in a world free of such appeals?' 'More important, will a Supreme Court verdict, by itself, ever deliver such a world?' asks Dilip D'Souza.
Over 300 eminent personalities from the creative and scholarly community of India, including actor Naseeruddin Shah, filmmaker Mira Nair, vocalist TM Krishna, author Amitav Ghosh and historian Romila Thapar have expressed solidarity with the students and others protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens. Writers Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, actors Ratna Patak Shah, Jaaved Jafferi, Nandita Das, Lillete Dubey, sociologist Ashis Nandy, activists Sohail Hashmi and Shabnam Hashmi were also among the signatories.
The inter-faith ceremony, where there was a traditional Hindu-style 'hawan' and chants of Sikh 'kirtan', saw participants also reading out the Preamble of the Constitution and taking oath to preserve its "socialist, secular" values.
