The Shiv Sena, that had abstained from voting on the contentious set of amendments to the citizenship law in the Rajya Sabha, will not join the Congress-led group of opposition parties that are expected to meet President Ram Nath Kovind.
“I do not know about it,” Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut told news agency ANI on Monday when he was asked about the opposition plan to petition President Kovind and ask him to intervene.
The Congress, which is in alliance with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, is playing a lead role in organising the delegation. A Congress leader told HT that Rashtrapati Bhavan had given them a 4.30 pm appointment.
As part of an effort to present a united opposition to the citizenship law, six opposition parties had also addressed a joint media conference to lash out at the government. Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad had announced the decision of opposition parties to march to Rashtrapati Bhavan to protest against the amended law on Tuesday.
Hours before the delegation was to set off, Sanjay Raut made it clear that the “Shiv Sena is not part of this delegation”.
Also missing from this group of opposition parties will be Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party that has been trying to distance itself from the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and beyond.
Mayawati, whose party had opposed the citizenship amendment bill in parliament, had announced on Monday that her party had requested time from the President to demand a judicial inquiry against what she described as “a brutal police crackdown” on students protesting the new law.
In its amended form, the law provides for citizenship to undocumented migrants from three Islamic countries – Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – if they belong to six minority religions such as Hindus and Sikhs.
Opposition leaders have insisted in Parliament and outside that granting citizenship on the basis of religion violates the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law. The Congress also apprehends that the NRC could be used to harass Muslims who aren’t able to prove their citizenship, particularly in West Bengal.
Ever since the BJP first brought an early version of the citizenship bill a few years back, the Shiv Sena has been an ardent supporter of the move. When the Lok Sabha debated the bill this month, it had also voted in its favour.
Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, however, recalibrated its stance at the request of the Congress and abstained from voting in the Rajya Sabha, ostensibly because Home Minister Amit Shah did not accept its two suggestions first made in the Lok Sabha. For a party that had always advocated a hardline hindutva line, the Shiv Sena, however, has had to walk a tightrope. This is important because it does not want to lose its traditional supporters and does make it a point to message that its alliance with the Congress has not come at the cost of its Hindutva ideology.
