CPM politburo member Brinda Karat on Saturday said Union home minister Amit Shah works as the “hate minister” of the country.

“Home minister Amit Shah... asked people to push the buttons in EVMs so hard that Shaheen Bagh gets electric current from it. I think this kind of comment is unfair. That is why I say Amit Shah is not the home minister, he is doing the work of hate minister,” Karat said at the inaugural session of the 22nd central conference of the CPM’s tribal wing here.

Shah had made the comment at a campaign rally in Delhi on January 26. The BJP lost the February 8 Assembly election.

Karat said the central government with its 'brute majority' in Parliament was 'fulfilling the agenda of communally polarising people'.

'BJP thought they are at liberty to fulfill their agenda in the name of religion as they had sheer majority. But after 2019 Lok Sabha election, a new direction in politics was observed. People are now speaking against this government,' she asserted.

The senior CPI(M) leader alleged that cases of mob lynching, communal violence and an 'environment of hatred' were results of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah's 'hate politics'.