Shah's remarks on CAB incorrect, TMC writes to Naidu

Trinamool Congress on Thursday approached Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, saying that Union Home Minister Amit Shah's remarks that there has been a consensus among all parties on the provisions related to persecuted minorities in neighbouring countries in the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill were not factually correct.

In a letter to Naidu, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha leader Derek O'Brien said he was a member of the Joint Committee on The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and what was stated by Shah in Rajya Sabha during Question Hour on Wednesday was not the "factual position".

While replying to questions, Shah had said that the Bill was passed by Lok Sabha after approval from the Joint Committee of Parliament. "Whatever is there in the Bill regarding religion, it was brought through a consensus of all parties. It was following a consensus that the Bill was brought into the House," he said about the Bill, which was lapsed with the dissolution of previous Lok Sabha as Rajya Sabha had not passed it.

The Narendra Modi government has already indicated its intention to bring the Bill in the ongoing Winter Session. The Cabinet is yet to approve the Bill, which intends to provide citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan while leaving out Muslims from these countries who have illegally entered India.

O'Brien said Naidu should refer to the report submitted by the Joint Committee to ascertain the correct positions of different political parties and his party's position was "emphatically outlined" in the Parliamentary report.

In the report submitted in Parliament on January 7 this year, the dissent note by O'Brien and his party colleague Saugata Roy said that they wanted the deletion of "specific mention of six minority communties and also the names of our neighbouring countries", which they emphaised was needed to "secularise" the Bill.

The report also had dissent notes of BJD's Bhartruhari Mahtab, Samajwadi Party's Javed Ali Khan, CPI(M)'s Mohd Salim besides three separate dissent notes by Congress MPs Bhubaneswar Kalita and Pradip Bhattacharya, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Sushmita Dev. Except Mahtab, all other MPs had objected to the clause related to specifying religion in the Bill, saying it was discriminatory.