Alleging that a false narrative is being set afloat about the Citizenship Amendment Act, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday underlined that CAA neither seeks to deprive any Indian citizen of his or her citizenship, nor does it exclude anyone from applying for Indian citizenship as before.

Claiming that CAA facilitates acquisition of Indian citizenship for minorities in the neighbouring countries, he asked “How can this reprieve, healing touch to those persecuted in our neighbourhood on account of their religious commitment be discriminatory?”

Addressing the 2023 batch IAS officer trainees at the conclusion of Phase-I of their professional course at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, the Vice-President said CAA applies to those who arrived in India on or before 31 December 2014 and is not an invitation to influx. “We have to neutralise these narratives. These emanate not out of ignorance, but out of a strategy to run down our nation,” he added.

He asserted that India does not need any sermons from anyone on this planet on the point of equality. Asking the countries to look within, he highlighted that “some countries are yet to have a woman president, while we had a woman Prime Minister before even the UK had. The Supreme Court in other countries completed 200 years without a woman judge, but we have.”

He asked the young minds to rebuff such “strategised orchestration of factually untenable anti- national narratives aimed at tainting and tarnishing our glorified and robust constitutional bodies.”

Stating that governance has taken a turn for the better in recent years, the Vice-President said that privileged pedigree is now sulking in the bye lanes. “Democratic values and essence is deepening as equality before law is being enforced in an exemplary manner and corruption is no longer a trading commodity. Earlier this was the only mechanism to passage to a contract, recruitment, opportunity,” he added.

Stating that some privileged pedigree earlier thought that they were immune to legal process and law cannot reach them, he asked, “how can someone in a democratic country like ours be more equal than others?”

Observing that the corridors of power have been sanitised of corrupt elements who extra legally leveraged decision making, the Vice-President noted that the country has been pulled out of despondency. India has become a land of hope and possibility. Stating that there is an upbeat mood all over the nation, he asserted that “India is no longer a nation with a potential or a sleeping giant…it is on the move.”