Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. (File) Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. (File)

Drawing a clear distinction between the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the new citizenship law, Odisha Chief Minister and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) chief Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday said the NRC will not be implemented in the state but justified his party’s MPs voting for the citizenship Bill in Parliament since it has “nothing to do with Indian citizens”.

“It only deals with foreigners,” Patnaik told the media at his residence in the state capital.

On why the party chose to support the Bill in both Houses of Parliament, a senior BJD leader said that Patnaik chose to support the “lesser evil”.

The leader said, “We saw that the CAB is not going to affect Indian citizens. With JD(U) on board (with the government), it was likely to pass (in Rajya Sabha) anyway. So we decided not to make an enemy of the Centre over this matter. However, NRC is not going to happen in Odisha”.

On the citizenship law, Lok Sabha MP from Puri and senior BJD leader Pinaki Misra told The Indian Express, “Article 14 (of Constitution) allows reasonable classification based on intelligent differentia which has a (rational) relation with the objective (of the Act). Reasonable classification is that CAA is bunching together those religions that are persecuted in Islamic countries, intelligible differentia is that Muslims cannot be persecuted in Islamic countries, and the rational relation is these are people with nowhere else to go.”

He also said, “The Supreme Court has to decide whether it is exclusionary – whether Muslims are being deliberately excluded – or inclusionary, where persecuted minorities in Islamic countries are being included.”

Patnaik had earlier assured the Muslim population in the state that NRC will not be implemented, a delegation had confirmed after meeting the Chief Minister. But in August, a court-endorsed committee comprising high-ranking Odisha government officials, which oversees wetland conservation and protection in the state, had suggested to the Home Department the need to initiate processes to implement NRC in coastal Kendrapara district.

The wording of the letter to the Home Department, written on August 3, indicated that the committee shared the view of the amicus, even though the officer who sent it denied making any suggestion about NRC.

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