THE All India Road Transport Workers' Federation (AIRTWF), in a statement issued on December 21, has demanded the central BJP government to repeal the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and condemned the brutal attack on protesters.

The BJP government, amidst strong protesting voices in the parliament, had passed the CAA to keep away a section of people living in India by striping their rights as citizens. The government has imposed religious criteria by considering certain sections of people, violating the provisions of our constitution. Such discrimination was created to cover up their lapses in the imposition of National Register of Citizenship in Assam and to advance their communal agenda throughout the country, the statement said.

The AIRTWF stated that nineteen lakh people in Assam have been removed from the NRC declaring them as outsiders in India and thousands have been confined to detention camps where living conditions are inhuman and the detainees are dying due to lack of basic health care. The CAA also overturned the carefully balanced agreement arrived at in 1985 through the Assam Accord. Similar imposition is now being planned in other states where detention camps are being constructed where the workers and particularly migrant workers will be the worst sufferers, the AIRTWF said.

This dangerous move of the BJP government at the centre has caused widespread protests all over the country killing 13 people in the police firing. Students and others in many states were brutally attacked by the police and goons.

The AIRTWF had organised strong protest actions against the anti-working class policies of the NDA government earlier. The road transport unions anxiously observe that the BJP government is creating discrimination which may divide the country and may cause widespread discontent among people irrespective of religion, caste and creeds. This is also being used to deviate attention from the present crisis and to create divide among the unified protest of the working people against the anti-people policies of the BJP government, the union said. 

It has demanded the government to repeal the CAA, not to proceed with the NRC and stop police atrocities on the protesters. It called upon all its affiliated unions to organise wide campaign among the workers to participate in the protest actions.