NEW DELHI: Congress veteran and former Union minister P Chidambaram said on Thursday that there should be a mass movement if any Muslim was sent to a detention camp in the event of the Supreme Court upholding the Citizenship Amendment Act.

"When they touch the excluded... they will only be Muslims, try to identify and throw them out, declare them stateless, there must be a huge mass movement resisting any Muslim being thrown out or kept in detention camps," Chidambaram said while replying to a question at an event in JNU.

When asked why the Congress brass had kept a distance from the anti-CAA protests and had not visited Shaheen Bagh, he said, "It is not true. I have led a march in Thiruvananthapuram and many other states. We are not going to Shaheen Bagh as it will be falling into the BJP's trap and will be made political."

Chidambaram also said that the only way to oppose CAA was legally and added that he believed in the Supreme Court which is hearing petitions against changes in the citizenship law. He questioned the fact that CAA was passed in just three days and was meant to make up for the "NRC fiasco" which resulted in the exclusion of 12 lakh Hindus out of Assam's National Register of Citizens.

He clarified that Congress was not against those included in the CAA. "We are against the law on the grounds of exclusion. Our opposition is about exclusion. Include all of them. In fact, our demand is not to deny citizenship but to include all neighbours and people of all religions. Let me make that very clear. But BJP goes around spreading lies. In fact, we go a step further, I have written about it, what we need today is not CAA but a law for refugees. We must have a broad, humane law on refugees. Who is a refugee and who will qualify as refugee? We are arguing for a broader law, a larger law on refugees."

