Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of indulging in appeasement politics only to win elections. Akhilesh Yadav also took to Twitter and wrote, “Don’t need NRC-NPR, we need employment.”
Flagging off a cycle rally of the party’s legislators from party’s headquarters to Vidhan Bhawan to register protest against the National Register of Citizens (NRC)/National Population Register (NPR) and Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), Yadav said the Narendra Modi Government had brought CAA to enforce the policy of discrimination on the grounds of religion in giving citizenship which is against the basic structure of the Constitution.
“No one from the BJP can decide whether we are citizens or not. If the need arises, I will be the first one who will not fill any form, but the question is will you support it or not? We will not fill the NPR form. What will you do? NRC and NPR are against the poor and minorities,” he said.
He added that people in the North-East and Assam were also unhappy with the CAA. Yadav claimed that the BJP was spreading fear among people of the country in the name of CAA and NRC.
The SP chief also attacked the Centre for its decision to start the work on NPR from April next year, saying when all the details were already provided in Aadhaar, what was the need to conduct the NPR exercise across India.
Yadav said his party was strongly against the CAA, NRC and NPR and would keep protesting against the same. The SP chief also targeted the Government for failing to take effective measures to revive he country’s economy and said that the banking sector had collapsed and demonetisation had destroyed country’s economy.
He claimed that since the government had failed to create employment opportunities and revive the failing economy, it came up with CAA, NRC and NPR to divert the attention of people from real issues.
During the rally, the SP legislators of the SP, with placards around their neck, pedalled about one km to reach Vidhan Bhawan to attend the special session on Tuesday morning. The session was convened for the ratification by the UP Assembly for the 126th Constitution Amendment passed by the Parliament to extend the SC/ST reservation in the legislature for another 10 years.
The SP legislators raised slogans against NRP, NRC and CAA. The legislators were stopped from entering the Vidhan Bhawan for some time due to security reasons and then allowed entry after proper identification.