Inappropriate to judge another country's legislature: LS Speaker writes to EU Parliament over anti-CAA resolution
New Delhi/IBNS: A a day after 600 of its 751 European Union Parliament members moved six resolutions on the Citizenship Amendment Act, expressing concern that it would create the "largest statelessness crisis in the world", Lok sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday wrote to its President stating that is is not proper for a legislature to pass judgement on another.
In a letter to the President of EU, Birla wrote: "It is inappropriate for a legislature to pass judgement on another, a practice that can be surely misused for vested interests."
"This Act provides for granting easier citizenship to those who have been subjected to religious persecution in our immediate neighbourhood. It is not aimed at taking away citizenship from anybody," the letter read.
Earlier, India rebuffed the EU's six resolutions and claimed the same as India's "internal matter."
Accusing the Narendra Modi government of "discriminating against, harassing and prosecuting national and religious minorities and silencing any opposition, human rights groups... and journalists critical of the government", the EU lawmakers had asked their Parliament to encourage a "strong human rights clause with an effective implementation and suspension mechanism" during any trade agreement.
The resolutions are likely to be tabled during the European Union Parliament session that starts next week in Brussels.
The same also comes ahead of PM Modi's visit to Brussels for India-EU summit in March.
The Narendra Modi government is also facing massive protests back home against the new contentious CAA which aims to grant citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi but not Muslim refugees who came to India from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh before 2015.
Already several states, which are not governed by the country's ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have said they will not implement the law.
After returning to power in 2019, the BJP government on Aug 5 took a historic step of abrogating Articles 370 and 35A to withdraw Jammu and Kashmir's "temporary" special status.
With the passage of time, the Centre is slowly restoring normalcy in the valley though several Kashmiri politicians including former Chief Ministers- Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti- are kept in detention.
Interestingly, the EU countries were not a part of the list of envoys from 15 countries who had recently visited Jammu and Kashmir at the Indian government's invitation.
However, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar had said the EU countries were absent due to "number constraints".
"It is not true that the EU ambassadors do not want a guided tour. We had restrictions in number. In fact EU had welcomed the visit to Jammu and Kashmir but they wanted to go in a group which was quite big," Kumar had said.
