Actor Rajinikanth backs CAA and NPR, says ‘essential for India’

When questioned about CAA and NPR, Rajinikanth said that he would be the first person to come out to the road and fight if the CAA affected Muslims

Chennai: Actor Rajinikanth on Wednesday said that the CAA and NPR were highly essential and requested students to first check with elders and professors before commencing on the protest that could wreck their future.

Apart from politicians exploiting the students, the FIRs filed against them for taking part in the agitation could be detrimental to their future, Rajinikanth warned while speaking to media outside his Poes Garden house even as he was on his way to the airport to catch a flight.

When questioned about CAA and NPR, Rajinikanth said that he would be the first person to come out to the road and fight if the CAA affected Muslims. He added Muslims had been living in India, treating it as their motherland, and nobody can expel them from here. Nobody is going to be affected and their interest would happen because of CAA, which is only meant to provide citizenship to people from other nations.

On NPR, he said that it was being undertaken regularly even during the Congress regime and that it would be taken again in 2021 only to know about the foreigners living in India.

These remarks of Rajinikant drew flak from many quarters, accusing him of being insensitive to the general feeling among the people of Tamil Nadu that the Central laws like CAA and NPR were aimed at depriving Muslims of their citizenship.

When questioned about SriLankan Tamils, Rajnikant said he was in favor of giving dual citizenship to them. Tamilians have been living in Sri Lanka since the Chola period and they belonged to that country. However, the Central government has clarified that there was no scope for providing dual citizenship to foreigners