Railway Minister slams TS Cabinet's anti-CAA decision

Hyderabad: Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal slammed the Telangana State Cabinet for passing an anti-CAA resolution and requesting the Center to abrogate the CAA.

Addressing the media here on Tuesday, he said he was happy when a Minister from Telangana KT Rama Rao had recently said at a conclave in Delhi on the need for the Centre and States, to work together.

But immediately after that on February 16 the State Cabinet passed a proposal to oppose CAA. "The move of the TS Cabinet was an insult inflicted on the constitution, freedom fighters and Parliament," he said.

It is a very sorry to see the State opposing a good law passed by the Center, "for the sake of appeasement and petty politics."

K Chandrasekhara Rao is indulging in petty politics and minority vote bank politics, probability, under the pressure from Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi.

The State government is reduced to acting on the instructions of Owaisis, who are outrightly indulging in religious politics and all the time trying to divide society on religious grounds.

"We hope wise counsel will prevail that it (the TRS government) will not act in such a way which will hurt the interest of people of the country," he said.

He clarified that "CAA is a law of India and no State government can pass a separate law or oppose the law passed by both the Houses of Parliament."

The law only provides citizenship to the religiously persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afganistan and it is not meant to take away the citizenship of anyone. But, "Owaisis and KCR's party TRS are trying to mislead people with falsehoods."

Taking a dig at KCR, Piyush Goyal said that if there is anyone who acted based on religion, it was KCR and TRS, misleading people with a false promise of an increase of 12 per cent reservation to Muslims from 4 per cent.

Despite the fact that the State High Court had scrapped and the issue is pending before the Supreme Court, the TRS had gone ahead passing law providing religious reservation, running politics with false promises and misleading people.

Goyal said that the TRS which has indulged in religious politics has no right to preach BJP. Contrary to the narrative of the TRS and AIMIM, he said that the Centre had not asked for the religion, place, language etc of anyone while implementing the Ayushman Bharat, free LPG connections, free power connections, Jandhan Yojana accounts, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana etc.