Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in an election rally in Midnapore on Sunday that the nationwide rollout of the Citizenship Amendment Act is "Modi’s guarantee" and the process has already begun with 300 refugees from neighbouring countries already being granted Indian citizenship.

"Four days ago, 300 refugees were granted citizenship and this is just the beginning. So long I am alive, no one can stop the rollout of the CAA... I want to tell the TMC people to listen carefully, CAA is Modi's guarantee," Modi said while speaking in a public rally at Midnapore in support of Agnimitra Paul (the BJP candidate for Midnapore) and Hiran Chatterjee (for Ghatal).

The prime minister’s "guarantee" came a day before the polls in Bongaon, a constituency where around 45 per cent of the 19-lakh electorate belong to the Matua community, refugees from Bangladesh, who have been demanding unconditional citizenship.

Bongaon will go for the polls in the fifth phase on Monday.

The BJP has made the CAA one of the major poll planks in this Lok Sabha election in constituencies like Bongaon, Barasat, Ranaghat, Krishnanagar, and Cooch Behar, where the Matua community has a strong presence.

The promise of the CAA rollout has so far yielded political gains for the party as it fared exceptionally well in Matua-dominated areas in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 Assembly polls.

Just before the announcement of the Lok Sabha poll schedule, the government laid down the implementation rules for the CAA in March 2024, five years after the act was passed by the Parliament. Since then, leaders like Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah have repeatedly promised to make it effective.

Modi, on Sunday, not only promised citizenship to the "brothers and sisters of the backward community" but went a step further to allege that Trinamool was misleading them to give access to infiltrators to use them as a potential vote bank.

"They (TMC) tell people from other states are outsiders but infiltrators who come crossing the border are very close to them. These infiltrators are dangerous for Bengal but they are close to TMC. The TMC government provides them fake ration and Aadhar cards,” Modi said in a rally in Bishnupur.

Modi alleged that TMC's politics was changing Bengal's demography.

He alleged that the people of Bengal are forced to migrate to other states for work. “These infiltrators occupy their place because the present government thinks that will create a safe vote bank for the party,” Modi said.