CAA will not be revoked as Congress will not come to power, Amit Shah says

Amit Shah defends CAA and criminal laws, accuses Congress of appeasement politics and harming persecuted communities.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said that neither would the Congress party ever come to power nor would laws such as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the three criminal laws ever be revoked.

He was responding to remarks made by former Home Minister and senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram on Sunday in Kerala that the CAA would be repealed in the first session of Parliament if the INDIA bloc came to power. 

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Mr. Shah said Congress leaders were talking about abolishing those laws that empower the common people of the country and protect their rights. “Blinded by the politics of appeasement, the Congress has lost its nerve upon seeing its crushing defeat in the first phase,” the Home Minister said. 

He said that through the CAA, the priority of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was to provide Indian citizenship and secure the rights of persecuted members of the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Sikh, and Parsi communities from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

“This law represents the fundamental principles of the Constitution. P. Chidambaram is insulting the dreams of the architects of the country’s Independence who advocated for these laws by talking about scrapping them. CAA is the nation’s law and it ensures that no one can stop citizenship from being granted to the brothers and sisters of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Sikh, and Parsi communities, who have suffered religious persecution and come to India. The Congress is hell-bent on harming Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Sikh, and Parsi communities to appease its vote bank,” he said.

The Home Minister added that by abolishing 150-year-old laws, the BJP has, for the first time in India’s history, attributed Indianness to the legal system, but the Congress still did not want to abandon its mentality of slavery. “Therefore, these people are objecting to these laws, which are fragrant in the country’s soil, while the justice system of the country is praising them openly,” Mr. Shah said.