Asserting that the CAA is a “reprieve” for persecuted religious minorities in neighbouring countries, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday said India does not need any sermons from other countries on the issue.

Dhankhar also said there were “false narratives and misinformation” on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was notified last month.

 Addressing the 2023-batch IAS officer trainees at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, Dhankhar said, “India does not need any sermons from anyone on this planet on the point of equality as we have always believed in it.”

 “Some countries are yet to have a woman president while we had a woman prime minister before even the UK had. Supreme Court in other countries completed 200 years without a woman judge but we have.”

Dhankhar said the CAA neither seeks to deprive any Indian citizen of his or her citizenship, nor does it exclude anyone from applying for Indian citizenship as was the case earlier.

CAA facilitates acquisition of Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from the neighbouring countries, he said.

 “How can this reprieve, healing touch to those persecuted in our neighbourhood on account of their religious commitment be discriminatory?” the vice president said.

 Noting that the CAA applies to those who arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014, he said it is “not an invitation” for an influx of people. 

“We have to neutralise these narratives. These emanate not out of ignorance, but out of a strategy to run down our nation,” he said.

 Dhankhar called urged the youth to rebuff such “strategised orchestration of factually untenable anti-national narratives aimed at tainting and tarnishing our glorified and robust constitutional bodies.”

The vice president said that governance has improved in recent years. “Democratic values and essence is deepening as equality before law is being enforced in exemplary manner,” he said.