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PM Modi launches Twitter campaign in support of amended Citizenship Act

Taking the first plunge, PM Modi in a tweet said that ‘India supports CAA because it is about giving citizenship to persecuted refugees and not about taking anyone’s citizenship away’.

PM Modi launches Twitter campaign in support of amended Citizenship Act

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Photo: AFP)

Amid nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched a twitter campaign in support of the contentious law.

The Twitter campaign has been hashtagged #IndiaSupportsCAA.

Taking the first plunge, PM Modi in a tweet said that “India supports CAA because it is about giving citizenship to persecuted refugees and not about taking anyone’s citizenship away”.

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The Prime Minister further asked Twitterati to check out the new hashtag in ‘Your Voice’ section of Volunteer module on NaMo App for content, graphics and videos, and show their support for CAA.

President Ram Nath Kovind had given his assent for the law after both houses of Parliament passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that seeks to give Indian citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh after facing religious persecution there.

According to the proposed legislation, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities, who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, till December 31, 2014, facing religious persecution there, will not be treated as illegal immigrants but given Indian citizenship.

Following this, protests erupted in the northeast, especially in Assam and Tripura, as the indigenous people are worried that the entry of these people will endanger their identity and livelihood.

PM Modi took to Twitter to assure the people of the state that they have nothing to worry adding that no one can take away their rights, identity and culture.

However, the protests that were earlier confined to the northeast, then spread across the country like wildfire after police clashed with students of Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University, who were demonstrating against CAA on December 15.

PM Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah as well as other BJP leaders have accused the opposition parties of fuelling unrest and arson over the issue in different parts of the country.

PM Modi has claimed that the opposition was providing tacit support to the violent protests that erupted in the Northeast and West Bengal over the amended Act.

As protests grew violent, PM Modi appealed for peace.

In various tweets, he termed the protests as “unfortunate and deeply distressing” and asked people not to let what he described as “vested interest groups” create a divide in society.

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