CPI(M) comes out with booklet "CAA, NRC and NPR: Ten Big Lies of the Modi Govt"

The CPI(M) on Tuesday released a booklet titled "CAA, NRC and NPR: Ten Big Lies of the Modi Government", asserting that the government's policy is reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda "Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth".

The booklet enumerates what the Left party claimed were 10 big lies about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR).

"The Cabinet has taken a decision to immediately start preparations for updating the National Population Register. After the passage of the CAA, which the CPI(M) had strongly opposed in both Houses of Parliament, this is the second dangerous step at setting up a framework to aggressively push for communal profiling in citizenship rights," the booklet, which has also been released in soft copy said.

The booklet said the CAA is an assault on the Constitution of India, countering the government's claims that it is not discriminatory.

It also alleged the government was lying when it accused the Opposition parties of opposing the amendment for vote bank politics.

"It is wrong to conflate concern for the rights of deprived sections to a toxic policy of exclusion from citizenship rights as is being done by the Modi Government," it said.

The booklet has also detailed how the CAA, NPR and NRC was related and said the BJP's plan is to first implement the CAA which will give citizenship rights to all non-Muslims from the three countries, Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan.

"Then the NRC will identify infiltrators. What is the difference between infiltrators and refugees? Only the Muslims do not qualify in CAA as refugees, and are therefore infiltrators," it said.

It has also listed a slew of claims made by the government, including statements made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other ministers, that NRC process is yet to start, claims that there were no detention centres anywhere and that no one was injured in police firing and labelled them as "lies".

"This is not a Hindu-Muslim issue as sought to be portrayed but one that affects the very Constitution of India and therefore every citizen of India. The sangh parivar should remember and learn from the words of Swami Vivekananda in his Chicago speech of 1893 "I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth," the booklet stated.