LS Speaker Om Birla reminds EU Parl counterpart of India’s sovereignty on CAA, with a note of caution

Mumbai: In a nuanced, carefully and sternly worded letter to his counterpart in the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday has not only reminded the sovereignty of India’s Parliament to make its own laws, he has subtly reminded the EP President David Maria Sassoli that any move on the part of the European Parliament to entertain the Joint Resolution on Indian Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019 would set an “unhealthy precedent”.

The Lok Sabha Speakers letter will also go a long way in putting Seattle City Council (municipal council) in USA on notice. Bizarre as it may sound, an Indian born, Democrat city councilor Kshama Sawant (originally hails from Mumbai) too has moved an anti-CAA and anti-National Register of Citizens (NRC) resolution 31926. Due to protests from the Indian community in Seattle the debate and voting on the controversial resolution has been postponed to February 3.

On a day when even the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) hesitated in taking on the European Parliament, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla showed just subtly as to why Lok Sabha parliamentarians respect his strict disciplinarian nature. A group of 10 Members of European Parliament (MEPs) from the Group of European United Left – Nordic Green Left, led by Idoia Villannueva Ruiz from Spain introduced an anti-CAA resolution on January 22. The Resolution will be debated at the plenary session of the EP on January 29 and will be voted on January 30.

Lok Speaker Om Birla, points out that the law provides for granting easier citizenship to those who have been subjected to religious persecution in India’s immediate neighborhood. He further states that the law does not take away citizenship from anybody. The Speaker then reminds his EP counterpart that the law was passed after due deliberations by both Houses of Indian parliament. In a way he meant to convey to his EP counterpart that the law was not pushed through and was passed after due debates in both the houses of the Indian parliament.

As the proverbial sting in the tail, the Lok Sabha Speaker while reminding his EP counterpart of their being members of the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU), he then invokes the sovereignty issue. In some stern words, Speaker Om Birla stated “we should respect the sovereign processes of fellow legislatures especially in democracies. It is inappropriate for one legislature to pass judgment on another, a practice that can surely be misused by vested interests. I would urge you to consider the proposed legislation in this light, confident that none of us want to set an unhealthy precedent”.

Official sources who did not wish to be named, opined that the genesis of the anti-CAA EP resolution could well have been in the MEA turning down the requests of some MEPs to join the visit of lawmakers from USA, South Korea, Norway and others on January 9. What has raises the eyebrows is that out of the 10 movers of the Resolution, 3 MEP’s each are from Spain and Greece and 2 each from France and Cyprus.

The 6 page EP resolution (B9-007/2020) of January 22 is more like a “scrambled egg” with not just CAA thrown in, but also refers to the recent abrogation of Article 370, Jammu and Kashmir, United Nations (UN) resolutions on Kashmir, Rohingyas, alleged claims of extra-judicial killings by law enforcement officials of protestors, seeking the intervention of the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) and demands that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to withdraw the Act.

What seems to have irked the Lok Sabha Speaker is the wording of the controversial resolution. The resolution states “the CAA marks a dangerous shift in the way citizenship will be determined in India and is set to create the largest statelessness crisis in the world and cause immense human suffering”. The resolution further alleges “Muslim citizens of India will be rendered stateless and put in detention camps”, besides imposition of curfew, internet shutdown, detention camps, alleged torture and deaths.

The Kshama Sawant resolution in Seattle City Council and her Facebook post, bears striking similarities in use of certain words. Sawant in her resolution states “that the Seattle City Council opposes the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship Amendment Act in India, and finds these policies to be discriminatory to Muslims, oppressed castes, women, indigenous, and LGBTQ people. This resolution urges the Parliament of India to uphold the Indian constitution by repealing the Citizenship Amendment Act, and to stop the National Register of Citizens (NRC)”.

In her Facebook post, Kshama Sawant  claims people being made “stateless” which also finds mention in the European Parliament resolution as well. “The CAA-NRC threaten to strip away the citizenship rights of – and render stateless – India’s 200 million Muslims, and hundreds of millions of others – oppressed castes, women, the poor, and LGBTQ people”. She goes a step ahead and remarks “the CAA-NRC are frighteningly similar to the Nuremberg laws of the Third Reich in 1930’s Germany”.

Local Seattle city resident Archana Sunil has slammed Kshama Sawant for her resolution and termed it as one based on misinformation and bigotry. She remarked “the Seattle City Council instead of tackling issues of 12,000 homeless people, drugs, sanitation and other issues is trying to interfere in the internal matters of a sovereign nation. The CAA is similar to the Lautenberg Amendment of 1989-1990. Which country in the world does not have a NRC of its citizens?”

The European Parliament resolution is bound to affect India’s bilateral relations with Spain, Greece, France and Cyprus whose MEP’s are piloting the resolution. Likewise, the Seattle City Council resolution will not only affect the bilateral ties with the US, it will also have an impact on the upcoming US Presidential elections as it is bound to split the Indian born American community along Republican and Democrat lines.