Senior Congress leader Margaret Alva on Saturday said the Citizenship (Amendment) Act "negates" constitutional guarantees and rights given to all Indians and that the judicial system which is supposed to be the protector and the interpreter of the Constitution "has failed us".
Speaking at the 'Of the People, By the People: The Indian Constitution' session at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival here, the former governor of Rajasthan said she had expected the courts "to be more active and more vocal" on the matter.
"Of late identity is being associated with religion. I don't know how or why this has begun to take root. We have been told that certain people are welcome and certain are not, some get automatic citizenship and others do not. To me this is a negation of the constitutional guarantees and rights given to all Indians," she said.
The 77-year-old politician said even when courts, in repeated judgements, have said the basic features of the Constitution cannot be touched, how then today are we debating the whole question of what is secularism?"
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