Bengaluru: Claiming that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA, violates constitutional provisions, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said: “The CAA law that has been passed in my judgment should be turned down by the Supreme Court on the grounds of it being unconstitutional because you cannot have certain types of fundamental human rights linking citizenship with religious differences.”
Mr Sen told this while speaking to reporters at the Infosys Science Foundation’s Infosys Prize 2019 in Bengaluru.
Maintaining that only the place of birth and the place of residence should matter for deciding citizenship, the Nobel Laureate said that citizenship on the basis of religion had been a matter of discussion in the constituent assembly where it was decided that “using religion for the purpose of discrimination of this kind will not be acceptable.”
NDTV quoted Mr Sen as saying, “My reading of the (amended) law is that it violates the provision of the Constitution.”
Agreeing that a Hindu who is persecuted in a country outside India deserves sympathy and his or her case must be taken into account, Mr Sen suggested: “It (consideration for citizenship) has to be independent of religion but take cognisance of the sufferings and other issues into account.”
Condemning the mob attack at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Mr Sen noted: “The communication between the university administration and the police got delayed due to which ill treatment of students went on without being prevented by the law enforcement agencies.”