Coronavirus infected people might not show the symptoms, but the recently elected Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi has already started showing the exact same symptoms that the party was showing last time when it won the elections in Delhi in 2015 or in 2013; instead of focusing on its own state, it has again started crying foul on what the BJP government is doing. And nothing to be surprised about it, this would continue for the next four years. Can anyone do anything about this? Absolutely not!
I am talking about the recent resolution passed by the Delhi Assembly against NRC. Does it help Delhi in any way? Does it solve any of the million problems Delhi already has? I know Delhi is not the only state that has passed such a resolution. Do these resolutions mean anything? Can they change anything?
The simple answer to these two questions is NO. Why? Article 257 of the Indian constitution puts an obligation on the state governments to ensure compliance with the acts made by Parliament and also authorizes the union government to issue directions to any state for this purpose. So, even if all 28 states instead of just 11 pass this kind of resolution, nothing is going to change, unless you keep constitution aside and start believing in anarchy.
This in fact one of the reasons why people like Sharjeel Imam don’t like Bharat, the center has more power than states and he and others like him fail to change the demographics of the state the way they want. Read my article on the same: Sharjeel Imam; a Hero or a Villain?
Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP is also trying to milk NRC to his own benefit as other regional parties including Indian National Congress have been doing till now. Three of the political parties i.e. JD(U), YSR Congress, BJD voted in favor of the Citzenship Amendmend Bill when it was tabled in the parliament. They could have voted against it and BJP would have never been able to get the Bill passed in the Rajya Sabha. If the parties were not in the favor of the bill, why did they even vote for it? Shiv Seva voted for the bill in Lok Sabha but walked out in Rajya Sabha. Why?
However, when I heard his speech, I was a little surprised. It looked for a second that he was playing on BJP’s turf. He, not only once but several times in his speech categorically denied that NRC was anti-muslim. Time and again he stated that irrespective of religion, Hindus, Muslims and ohters will have to show the documents i.e. NRC does not discriminate on the basis of religion. In fact he quoted a number from the Assam NRC that out of 19 lakh people excluded from the NRC, 14 lakh are Hindus and only 5 lakh are Muslim. I thought may be the way Aam Admi Party’s leaders got exposed in instigating and orchestrating anti-Hindu riots in Delhi, he is trying to pacify the center. But then I listened to the speech carefully and realized what he was trying to do.
As of today, he and his party has unquestionable support from the Muslims. Also read Delhi under siege!!! Muslims of the country have successfully shifted their trust from Indian National Congress to Aam Aadmi Party and he knows it. He is trying to expand his voter base. His speech was carefully curated using blatant lies, misleading and incomplete information to create chaos, unsettle and agitate Hindus who are not that well off, who are poor and who would find it very difficult to verify if what he said is true or not. He is trying to carve out a new narrative that suits his politics, where CAA-NPR-NRC is anti-poor. He has been trying this for some time now.
He without any gumption in his speech said that the 19 lakh that did not make in the list were sent to the detention centers. He had already mentioned, that 14 out of these 19 lakh were Hindus. This is an outright lie. There are around 1000 people in six detention centers in Assam and not 19 lakh. Moreover, it is not the Modi government who built all of these six detention centers, the first detention center came in existence in 2008 on the orders of Guhati High Court.
He insinuated that as the NRC rules the only document that would prove the citizenship is a birth certificate. He claimed 61 of the 70 MLAs in the assembly would lose their citizenship since they don’t have the birth certificate. This is an incorrect and incomplete piece of information. As per official NRC Assam website there are two lists of documents, from the list 1 a person has to produce a document out of the 14 listed documents. In case he/she does not have any of the documents in the list 1 on his name but has the same for any of his parents, grand parents or great grand parents, he will have to produce an extra document out of the 8 different documents listed in the second list. So, even if the person does not have his birth certificate, he has 13 other documents to choose from in the list one, and if doesn’t have these he has 8 more options to choose from. And this is when we are talking about the NRC that happened in Assam, for the actual pan India NRC, there is no draft.
Once he was done stating that 90% of the people don’t have birth certificates by means of his lies and incomplete pieces of information, he stated that the government will then force these Hindus to say that they are Pakistanis. In fact he also added that they will have to produce an affidavit stating the same and then they will get the citizenship. I don’t know where this is coming from especially when there is no NRC draft in existence. He himself says that there is no draft for NRC now. How and where did he find this information? Either god knows or he knows.
Having said all this, he did say one thing that needs to be highlighted. NPR happened in 2010 as well, but there were no issues then, why are there so many issues with the NPR this time? Did BJP create an unwanted mess out of NPR? This indeed is a valid point.
Before I get to the answer of this question, let me highlight one more misleading and incomplete piece of information he used in his speech. He quoted examples of people who were left out of the list, but he did not give the exact reason why they were left out. For instance he claimed that Mohammad Sanaullah an ex-army man was left out of the list. But he did not tell the reason that he was left out of the list because the documents he provided were incorrect/incoherent. His was a false identity case and the case was taken to the high court. Why was it a false identity case? Two reasons: One of his documents stated his year of birth as 1967 and his date of enrollment showed the year 1978. Have you seen a 12 year old serving the Indian Army? And second, his voter ID issued to him in 1987 showed his age as 22, however it should have been 20 as he was born in 1967. This spooked the NRC officer and he flagged it. This is/was the reason for him not in the list.
Now coming back to my question “NPR happened in 2010 as well, but there were no issues then, why are there so many issues with the NPR this time? Did BJP create an unwanted mess out of NPR?” Last time there was no verification or validation. This time the government officials are doing their due diligence. That’s why the mess. Even before the pan India NRC was not even in the talks, I wrote two different articles on population explosion in India: Population Explosion -Part 1 and Population Explosion 2 – The missing ‘Aadhar’ which highlighted the two very specific reasons why the population in India is rising at an alarming rate. They both refer to the inconsistency in the way census in India have been done in the past. I would request the readers to read both of these articles. Arundhati Roy did not invent the idea of Ranga-Billa. Some already used Raju/Chintu/Monu/Sonu. The official went to the house and the man of the house said, he lives alone, 1 person added in the census, no checks to find out if there were some more people lived in the house. Census/NPR done in the past was a mere formality, all were registered as per the word of mouth, no verification. Just one census with due diligence and you will see the correct population of India and there won’t be minority rhetoric anymore.
Now you may guess why some people are so opposed to verification or showing documents and a thorough census.
As far as Arvind Kejriwal is concerned, he does not care about what happens to the country. His goal is to become a national party, he is looking forward to the Bihar and UP elections. Otherwise why would he mention that there are around 40 lakh 40 lakh purvanchali (from UP and Bihar). It is not that only the people from UP and Bihar are living in Delhi. People from many other states live in Delhi. Do you agree?
You could listen to his speech here and add in the comments if I missed something.
Thanks for reading!
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