Congress leader P Chidambaram had strong words for the ruling BJP on Tuesday after the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was cleared in the Lok Sabha at 12.02 am on Tuesday.

After spending over two months in Tihar Jail in connection with the INX Media case, Chidambaram accused the BJP of “trampling over the wishes of the State and the People” after winning the brute majority in the Lower House. Chidambaram said defeats such as the one over the CAB were “the price we pay for giving a party a brute majority.”

“That is the price we pay for giving a party a brute majority that it uses to trample over the wishes of the States and the People,” the former Home and Finance Minister said.

That is the price we pay for giving a party a brute majority that it uses to trample over the wishes of the States and the People.

— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) December 10, 2019

CAB, was cleared by the Lok Sabha yesterday after several hours of heated discussions; 311 MPs voted in support of a bill the opposition has repeatedly decried as discriminatory and a law that violates Article 14 of the Indian Constitution.

Protests were mounted in the Northeast where political leaders, including MPs allied with the BJP, and civil society members and organisations campaigned against it. An 11-hour shutdown in the region is being observed by an umbrella body of students’ organisations, supported by regional political parties.

The CAB will now be tabled before the Rajya Sabha and the Congress, one of the bill’s fiercest critics, could move the Supreme Court if it is passed, party leader Gaurav Gogoi said according to news agency PTI.

Chidambaram referred to that possibility in his tweet and said his fellow parliamentarians were “abdicating responsibilities in favour of lawyers and judges”.

“CAB is unconstitutional. Parliament passes a Bill that is patently unconstitutional and the battleground shifts to the Supreme Court. Elected Parliamentarians are abdicating their responsibilities in favour of lawyers and judges!” he said.

When the voters will vote for a candidate when he is with the Congress and will
vote for him when he defects to BJP,
can we say that Indian politics has acquired a transcendence & formlessness that makes India=Heaven.

— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) December 10, 2019

The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, or CAB, seeks to amend a six-decade-old law to make it easier for non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan to become Indian citizens. Should it be passed, the CAB will become the first bill under which nationality will be granted on the basis of religion.

Earlier this week more than 1,000 scientists and scholars signed an open statement to express concerns over the CAB. They called the use of religion as a criterion to determine eligibility to apply for Indian citizenship is “deeply troubling”.