Kerala had pledged not to implement the CAA when it was enacted last year.
Thiruvananthapuram:
Kerala will not implement the center’s controversial citizenship law, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Sunday, reiterating an earlier stance after a new announcement by Union Interior Minister Amit Shah that the law would apply once it ends. the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus.
“The Home Secretary has said that he will implement the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) after the Covid vaccination campaigns are over. We have already made our position clear. This government will not allow this disaster in Kerala,” Vijayan said in a campaign event for assembly elections in the state.
“We have been asked that as a state government, how can we say that we will not implement this? We are reiterating, we will not implement CAA,” he said.
The statement came two days after Amit Shah, in an assurance to a Hindu immigrant community in West Bengal ahead of elections in the state, said that the Citizenship Amendment Act will be implemented after the COVID-vaccination campaign. 19.
“As soon as the Covid vaccination process is finished, the process of granting citizenship under the CAA will begin,” he said, addressing the Matua community of Bengal.
Widely criticized as discriminatory as it makes religion a criterion for Indian nationality for the first time, the CAA promises citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants who arrived from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan before 2015.
The communist government of Kerala announced last year, when the law was passed by parliament sparking protests across the country, that it will not implement it and was the first state to challenge it in the Supreme Court.
The CAA, which came into effect last January, had sparked widespread protests as many feared that, together with the planned National Citizen Registration Plan, or NRC, it would result in billions of Muslims losing their citizenship. .
The central government, however, says the law is necessary to help those who have faced religious persecution and will not jeopardize the citizenship of any Indian.
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