Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao on Wednes-day has offered to convene a grand public meeting in Hyderabad on the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30 to oppose the amendments carried out in the Citizens Act (CAA) and the proposed nationwide implementation on the National Register of Citizens (NRC), in which, he would invite all chief ministers who were against such an exercise.
Mr Rao said this while discussing the issue with a delegation of the United Muslim Action Commi-ttee (UMAC) led by AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, at Pragathi Bhavan, his official residence, on Wednesday.
The delegation, comprising religious and community leaders, met the Chief Minister and discussed issues pertaining to CAA, the National Population Register (NPR) and NRC, which last for more than three hours.
According to sources, Mr Rao said “I will send my son K.T. Rama Rao, along with Mr Owaisi, to invite various chief ministers and other national political figures for the meeting. On this issue, I am ready to share the dais with leaders of Congress and Left parties. I will talk to them as it concerns up-holding the constitution.”
He said he refused to support the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB).
“My mindset is against such discrimination. I told them that if they were ready to include Muslims, I would support it,” the TRS supremo said.
He assured the delegation that he would until not allow communalism to flourish in Telangana till his last breath. He said this was not issue of one community, but rather, every community would suffer during such an exercise.
Mr Rao advised the delegation to proceed with their protests in a “sensible manner” and not allow anyone to communalize it. “We have to strive hard to uphold the secular fabric of the country. This drive shall continue for a long period and we have to adopt various means and tools to oppose it,” the leader said.
Later, Mr Owaisi reiterated his opinion that NPR was the first step towards implementing a nationwide NCR.
“Union home minister Amit Shah was misleading the nation over the NPR and the NCR. NPR was not an exercise of census as it was not be done under the Census Act, but under the Citizenship Act, which has been recently amended. This clearly shows that it is directly linked with NRC,” Mr Owaisi said.
Refusing the claims of Mr Shah and other BJP leaders that the NPR had no link with the NRC, the MIM chief cited many references from government reports and orders issued by the ministry of home affairs.
Mr Owaisi said that Chief Minister Rao had advised them to invite all parties opposed to the NRC, including Congress and the Communist parties for public protest meetings. In a first step towards this, the Congress and the Left parties would be invited for a meeting to be organised on Friday in Nizamabad.
MIM president also claimed the meeting with the chief minister was very fruitful and purposeful.
