Bhubaneswar: Union Minister and senior BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan said on Thursday that the Congress was solely responsible for the country-wide violence over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Those were 'sponsored' protests which were being supported by the Congress, Pradhan alleged.
Addressing a presser in Bhubaneswar on BJP's Jan Jagran Abhiyan, Pradhan charged that Congress had incited people to indulge in violence which disturbed peace in India. "Congress is spreading false propaganda against the Citizenship Amendment Act as it is intolerant and despondent. It is Prime Minister Narendra Modi who took a bold measure to correct a historical blunder and provide citizenship to lakhs of minorities who left Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and took refuge in India after 1947."
The Union Minister further pointed out how leaders of the current rival party had strongly advocated the same legislation in the past. For Pradhan, the same Congress has changed its stance now.
Notably, late PM Indira Gandhi had travelled across the world to mobilise support for the people of Bangladesh amid a massive crackdown on civilians by the Pakistan Army.
To prove its point, the Bharatiya Janata Party had also recently circulated a video of Rajya Sabha proceedings in 2003 when Manmohan Singh, the then leader of Opposition, had asked for a liberal approach to granting citizenship to minorities, who are facing persecution, in neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan.
"No country accepts foreigners indiscriminately. The fact that we are even debating CAA is loathsome. We will reach one crore people in Odisha to educate them to dispel false propaganda about the new act," added Pradhan.
Responding to Pradhan's statements, Odisha Congress chief Niranjan Patnaik said, "We believe in non-violence and secularism because if that were not the case, India would not have become the country with the second-largest population of Muslims. The BJP says that we are politicising but I want to ask the saffron party one thing, are they not passing so many rules and policies by playing communalism card?"