Union home minister Amit Shah came to Bengal on Thursday after almost a year — during which his party suffered one humiliating defeat after another in the state — and again voiced the BJP’s divisive agenda by asserting that the CAA will be implemented before the 2024 polls.
He also accused the Mamata Banerjee government of aiding and abetting infiltration from Bangladesh.
Even as Shah stressed on these two issues — making it clear that the BJP's turnaround strategy hinges on playing the divisive card — Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee swatted away The BJP’s political prospects and said it would “not return to power in 2024”.She said the BJP’s promises on CAA were nothing but lies.
“I want to make this clear to you today. Trinamul Congress is spreading rumours that CAA won’t be implemented... I’m telling you today, once the corona wave is over we will implement CAA and provide citizenship to our brothers,” Shah said at a public meeting in Siliguri.
“Mamatadidi, you want illegal infiltration to continue and refugees (from Bangladesh) not receive citizenship. But let the Trinamul people get this straight that the CAA was, is and will remain a reality, you cannot do anything about it,” Shah said.
Multiple sources in the BJP said Shah had to broach the CAA issue as several lawmakers from his own party threatened to resign if the act wasn’t implemented at the earliest. The BJP legislative party has already drawn up a plan to bring up the CAA with Shah in Calcutta on Friday.
“We need to consolidate Hindu votes ahead of the 2024 general polls. That can only be done if the CAA and the infiltration issues are brought back into the discourse...” a BJP office-bearer said.
In a scornful negation of Shah’s CAA claims, Mamata said he was lying about implementing the act and repeated lying means corruption.
“Everyone is already a citizen… He has become the home minister today, the Prime Minister is running the country. How did the people vote for them if they (people) are not citizens? It is they who elect the PM, the CM… Nobody has the right to insult them in the name of citizenship,” Mamata said.
“Why have they not brought this bill to Parliament?” Mamata asked.
Taking a dig at the BJP’s delay in framing CAA rules, Mamata said that “the bill (act) has lapsed”.
The CAA was passed in Parliament on December 11 2019 and received the President’s assent a day later. Though the Centre had said that the act will come into force from January 10, 2020, so far the home ministry has sought 5 extensions to frame its rules. On April 9 this year, the latest extension till October 9 was allowed.
Mamata also refuted Shah’s claims that her party is spreading rumours about the implementation of the act and said that it is BJP’s ‘internal matter’, which it is trying to impose on other parties.
“We don’t want any citizen’s rights to be curbed. We have to stay together,” Mamata said. “After one year he came, he should have been hiding his face (for) the behaviour we have seen at the time of election. Every time he comes, he speaks dirty, he speaks corruption, he speaks oppression…” she added.
When asked if she thinks that BJP is trying to revive the CAA issue ahead of the general polls, Mamata asserted that the saffron camp is not going to return to power in 2024.
Earlier Shah had attended two events in North 24 Parganas’ Hingalganj and Haridaspur where he attacked the state government for not doing enough to stop infiltration and smuggling.
“While coming here, the leader of the Opposition was telling me in my ears that there is a lot of infiltration here. But when we were coming back he said that now there will be a fall in infiltration,” Shah said after inaugurating three floating Border Outposts.
Replying to his accusations Mamata said that by virtue of being the nation’s home minister it is his duty to check infiltration, cross-border smuggling and to ensure peace.
Interestingly on April 23 union defence minister Rajnath Singh, at an event in Assam’s Guwahati, had said that infiltration from Bangladesh has almost stopped.