On CAA, Strength of ‘Liberal-Seculars' is only Hypocrisy and Falsehood

In a parliamentary democracy as we have in India, every enactment or an amendment to the existing Act of parliament has to be tabled in the two houses of parliament, must be discussed, after discussion put to vote of the house and passed by majority.

- AMBA CHARAN VASHISHTH

In the matter of the recent amendment to the Citizens’ Act 1955 this procedure was duly followed. After full discussion the opposition stressed on a division and the amendment was carried with a comfortable majority — 311 in favour and 80 against in Lok Sabha and 125 for and 105 against in Rajya Sabha. After the President of India gave his assent the Bill became the Citizens Amendment Act (CAA).

What else could be the democratic process? How could then a section of the opposition allege that democracy in the country has been/is being throttled? Opponents fail to enlighten the countrymen as to what way should have been adopted to get a law, like the CAA, through in a ‘democratic’ way? The procedure adopted by the present NDA government to get an enactment through in Parliament or state assembly is exactly the same as had been adopted by any Congress or non-Congress government in the past.

The people have not forgotten how did the then Congress-led UPA government of Dr. Manmohan Singh go to the extent of ‘purchasing’ support of other groups to sail through the Indo- US Civil Nuclear Deal because it did not command adequate numbers on its own strength. And yet that was perfectly ‘democratic’!

It is no democracy when those parties and leaders rejected by the people claim to be the custodians of peoples’ interests. It is a display of arrogance and autocracy by these self-righteous self-acclaimed ‘democratic’ leaders who cannot digest what the NDA government has gone so swiftly to fulfill the promises it made to the people during the general elections to Parliament held in May 2019.