Adding that the country is going through challenging times, he said that it was important for every citizen to preserve originality of thinking and freshness of ideas.
Speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the MP from Thiruvananthapuram further said that the CAA issue is a central one and the resolutions passed by different state assemblies including those of Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan and West Bengal were political statements telling the centre and the world that they were not happy with the move.
"However, after CAA, when the central government does NPR and NRC, they would need the support of state government employees, for example school teachers and government officials in different state departments. If the state government tells them not to go ahead, how can the employees refuse considering they report to the state government?
When asked about the five people who were detained at JLF for raising anti-CAA slogans, the MP said he didn't know about the same and would ask Rajesh Pilot, the Deputy CM of Rajasthan who was also present at the festival about the same.
"Everybody has freedom of expression in this country, I will definitely enquire about the incident."
(Sukant Deepak can be reached at sukant.d@.in)
( With inputs from IANS )