At the meeting, the NDA leaders also hailed PM Modi for the Bodo accord and the settlement of Tripura’s Bru tribe members. (Express File Photo) At the meeting, the NDA leaders also hailed PM Modi for the Bodo accord and the settlement of Tripura’s Bru tribe members. (Express File Photo)

Calling on NDA leaders to back the Citizenship (Amendment) Act strongly in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday insisted that his government has no reason to feel defensive about the new legislation.

After a meeting convened for the Budget Session in the national capital, a BJP ally told news agency PTI that the Prime Minister called on his government to aggressively take on the opposition’s charge that the amended citizenship law discriminated against Muslims and said that minorities are as much “ours as other citizens are”.

The ally, who did not wish to be quoted, said that PM Modi stated that the government has done nothing wrong as far as the CAA is concerned and has no reason to feel defensive about it.

In the meeting, NDA leaders also hailed PM Modi for the Bodo accord and the settlement of Tripura’s Bru tribe members.

Meanwhile, the opposition leaders have said that they will raise the issue of nationwide protests against the CAA in the Parliament session and accused the Modi government of making no efforts to reach out to the protesters.

In the backdrop of the extensive protests against CAA, President Ram Nath Kovind, earlier in the day, sidestepped references to NRC in his address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament at the start of Budget session. His omission holds significance in wake of the fact that the President had announced Modi government’s decision to “implement the process of ‘National Register of Citizens’ on priority basis” in his address to the joint sitting at the inauguration of 17th Lok Sabha on June 20 last year.

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