Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday attacked the Opposition parties for passing a resolution against the Citizenship Amendment Act, saying it would have made Pakistan happy, PTI reported.

“Opposition unity stands exposed as major parties like Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party kept away,” Prasad told reporters. “The resolution is neither in national interest nor in the interest of security. It is also not in the interest of those minorities who fled neighbouring countries to escape persecution.”

The minister said Opposition leaders ended up “unnecessarily” attacking the Narendra Modi-led government.

Twenty Opposition parties attended a meeting in New Delhi convened by Congress President Sonia Gandhi. They passed a resolution calling on the Bharatiya Janata Party government to withdraw the amended citizenship law and stop the National Register of Citizens and National Population Register projects.

The resolution said: “The CAA, NPR and NRC is a package that is unconstitutional, which specifically targets the poor, the downtrodden, the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and the linguistic and religious minorities. We demand the withdrawal of the CAA and the immediate stoppage of the nationwide NRC/NPR.”

They appealed to non-BJP chief ministers, who had announced not to carry out a proposed nationwide NRC, to suspend the exercise of enumeration of the National Population Register exercise, alleging that it is a prelude to the citizens’ register.

In a joint statement, the leaders also urged citizens to come out in large numbers on January 23, the birthday of freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, on Republic Day on January 23, and on January 30, Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary.