BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday said that Congress had passed a resolution in 1947 for giving citizenship to non-Muslims from Pakistan. Countering the arguments that the Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 was against the spirit of the Constitution and was discriminatory against a particular religion, Swamy said that Article 14 does not bar the amendment. He also quoted former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which he claimed minorities in Bangladesh had faced persecution and hence it was the moral duty of the government to provide refuge to these people. Swamy claimed that the then Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi submitted a memorandum to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging that the religious minorities who had fled persecution should not be treated as a foreigner and given citizenship. "This bill is something we need to protect ourselves," the BJP MP said.
