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The Congress said on Thursday that the Centre is trying to portray Opposition States’ complaints against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Population Register as a ‘rebellion’ against the Constitution. It also alleged that the Centre is trying to invoke Article 356 against the States who have complained against CAA and NPR.
Party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the Constitutional provisions were used while challenging the CAA in apex court.
“These are petitions filed challenging all aspects of the validity of the CAA and its related initiatives. These petitions are filed under the specifically created constitutional provision under Article 131, which is not available to you and me. I find nothing wrong in a State saying, look I have filed/filing a challenge till such time as maximum one month, two month, three months it say, the Apex Court will decide the challenge this way or that way. I don’t intend operationalising something which I have challenged. That’s about it now, to mischaracterise this, as the Government is desperately trying to do as a constitutional rebellion, to mischaracterise it as a revolt possibly as an excuse to impose Article 356, is bizarre,” Singhvi said.
He said out of the 30-60 countries which emerged from the yoke of imperialism between the 1930s and the 1960s only India has remained a vibrant, diverse democracy. Citing the Democracy Index computed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, he said the country has declined 10 straight points and said the index has never been as low as 51 for India in the past 14 years.
“This is a red-flag which should remind us every minute of our existence that diminishing democracy is what we have to be eternally vigilant against. This is our proud heritage, it is our proudest possession. We can’t allow it to dilute or diminish even by one millimetre,” he said.
Singhvi said people are very scared of the government. “The death of the democracy is not an assassination from ambush. The death of democracy is slow extinction from apathy, from indifference, from under-nourishment,” he said.
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