India reached out to countries to share govt perspective on CAA and NRC: MEA

New Delhi: The Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday informed that India had reached out to countries and India's perspective on CAA and NRC has been communicated. The ministry's official spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said this during his weekly media briefing in New Delhi.

"We did reach out to countries across all geographical regions, we did write to our missions to share our perspective on the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens with the host government," he said when asked about the reported concerns of foreign diplomats in India regarding CAA.

Kumar explained that it has been clarified that first and foremost it is an internal matter and then any misgiving against the act was cleared. "India stands by its statement that the Act provides expedited consideration for Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities from the three neighbouring countries living in India," he said adding, "It (CAA) does not change the basic structure of the Constitution."

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On the matter of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) reportedly discussing Kashmir issue in a meet, the MEA called it "entirely speculative". "We are not aware of any such meetings of OIC on India-related matter," he said.

He also mentioned that another date for the annual meet between India and Japan will be finalised soon and that they were in dialogue with the Japanese side through diplomatic channels. "We are in touch with the Japanese side through diplomatic channels, we do hope that very soon we will come to the finalisation of a date," Raveesh Kumar said. 

The annual India-Japan Summit was supposed to be held in Guwahati on December 15-17 but was cancelled due to the ongoing anti-CAA agitation in Assam.

Violent protests erupted in several parts of the country in the past few weeks over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, which grants citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Buddhists, and Christians who fled from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh fearing religious persecution and have been living in India on or before December 31, 2014.