Saffron party is confident of passage of CAB in the Rajya Sabha
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EW DELHI : The controversial the citizenship (Amendment) Bill, cleared by the Lok Sabha on Monday, will be tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
The BJP is confident of the passage of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha which will be introduced in the upper house on Wednesday, sources said on Tuesday.
The Bill piloted by Union home minister Amit Shah was comfortably passed in the Lok Sabha on late Monday night as the ruling BJP enjoys a clear majority in the house. Sources in the party said that the legislation will also sail through the Rajya Sabha as the ruling NDA has the numbers.
As per the calculations of the BJP’s floor managers, the effective strength of the Rajya Sabha is 238. The NDA’s current strength is 105 in the House, including 83 members of the BJP, six of Janata Dal (U), three of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), one each from LJP and RPI(A) and 11 nominated MPs.
The BJP is in talks with AIADMK which has 11 members, the BJD with seven members, YSRCP with two members and TDP with two members. The saffron party is confident of their support as all these parties had backed the bill in Lok Sabha. With the support of these 22 members, the BJP-led NDA will have the support of 127 members in the House which is above the majority mark of 120.
While the BJP and its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) enjoy an overwhelming majority in the lower house that helped it get 334 votes in favour of the bill and 106 against in the lower house, the party’s hold on the Rajya Sabha is wobblier.
With a current strength of 240, the majority mark in the upper house is 121. The NDA, which includes parties like AIADMK, Janata Dal United and the Akali Dal, has 116 members and expects the support of 14 others, taking its numbers to 130.
The 14 includes three members of the Shiv Sena, a former BJP ally that voted in favour of the Bill in the Lok Sabha but has said its support in the Rajya Sabha is not certain. Even if the Sena abstains, the BJP will not have reason to worry as it will bring down the majority mark.
Seven members of BJD, two of YSRCP and two of Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP are also among the 14 non-aligned lawmakers. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has 64 members and expects 46 others, like the Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and Communist Party of India (Marxist), to oppose the bill, taking its total to 110.
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Opposition ranks have been boosted by the decision of the six-member TRS, which has often backed the Modi government on its key legislative agenda, to oppose the bill.
Some members, like the ailing Amar Singh, may not attend the House for health or other personal reasons. The Lok Sabha passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill around midnight on Monday that will grant citizenship to religious minorities from neighbouring countries, but not Muslims, amid raucous scenes in parliament and protests in the country’s northeast.
The controversial legislation provides that Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians fleeing persecution in Muslim-majority Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan can be granted citizenship. Opposition parties stood against the proposed law that would, for the first time, create a legal pathway to grant Indian nationality on the basis of religion.
(With Agency Inputs ).
