Brexit will oust 73 members, many of them anti-CAA, from Euro parliament

When the European parliament meets again at the end of March to vote on India’s CAA legislation, the 73 British MEPs, many of whom are believed to be behind the numerous resolutions against India, won’t be present. With Brexit kicking in on Friday, all 73 British MEPs would have left. To that extent, the deferment of the vote in the European parliament was a last hurrah that was aborted.

Gaitri Kumar, India’s envoy to Brussels, has met all the groups who have sponsored the drafts in the past couple of days to explain the Indian perspective. Some of the groups have already been convinced of the Indian argument. The resolutions, sources here believe, have been sponsored by Pakistan via some of the British Labour and Liberal Democrat MEPs who belong to groups like S&D and Renew Europe which have sponsored these resolutions.

Foreign minister S Jaishankar will be visiting Brussels in mid-February in preparation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit there for the India-EU summit on March 13. Some of the European lawmakers said they would wait to get answers from him before voting on the resolution. In addition, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla also wrote to the president of the European Parliament, David Maria Sassoli: "As members of Inter Parliamentary Union, we should respect sovereign processes of fellow legislatures, especially in democracies."

However, the issue has not died, merely been kicked down the road. For Pakistan, this exercise keeps the issues in play, particularly because they have been portrayed as being infringement on human rights and Islamophobia.

The Indian defence centered around the argument that the CAA process is internal to India. In addition, it is being debated hotly on the streets, in the states and in the courts. There are 60 petitions pending in Supreme Court against this amendment.

The government’s view has been that the entire process would be allowed to run the course of popular and judicial scrutiny. For the European parliament to be passing resolutions on something that is undergoing scrutiny in India, would be disingenuous.

But within the Indian government, certain quarters say the commission and member states should do their bit with their own MEPs, given the extensive briefings etc. that their diplomats have been accorded by the Indian government. Sources said, “As fellow democracies, the EU Parliament should not take actions that call into question the rights and authority of democratically elected legislatures in other regions of the world.” In addition, India said the European countries themselves have set up their own conditions for naturalisation that is dependent on their own context, with their own criteria. India’s context is unique, given the circumstances of its partition and the politico-religious context that exists in this subcontinent. “Every society that fashions a pathway to naturalisation, contemplates both a context and criteria. This is not discrimination. In fact, European societies have followed the same approach.

 timesofindia