Senior BJP leaders on Friday reached here on Friday, in the wake of nationwide protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens, in an attempt to reassure the Muslim community that they were under no threat.

Two-term sitting BJP MP pf Chatra Sunil Singh met the media and spoke on expected lines, that the NRC and CAA were not directed against the Muslims of India and the community should not live under any fear or apprehension of getting thrown out.

When The Telegraph asked MP Singh why citizenship under this amended law was not available to Tamils in Sri Lanka who suffer indignity and persecution in that country, the MP said: “The CAA is for Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, where religious minorities are denied basic human rights and liberties.”

The BJP MP denied that the NPR (National Population Register) was a prequel to the NRC and said: “No, it (the NPR) is different.”

On being told that in the first five-year-term of the BJP (2014 –19) then Union minister of state for home affairs Kiren Rijiju had stated on the floor of the Lok Sabha that the NPR was a step towards the NRC, the MP replied: “I remember I wasn’t present in the Lok Sabha then.”

Singh said there were no protests at all in Rajasthan over this issue which “makes one wonder who is stoking this fire…Muslims are just falling in their trap.”

The Chatra MP added that he had been a panellist of the joint parliamentary committee set up for CAB (the bill).

“With us were MPs of the Congress and other parties too but the Congressmen never raised any whimper of protest when the committee gave its report to the Lok Sabha,” the MP said but did not give date or names.

There is no protest against the NRC and the CAA in Daltonganj as of now.

A rally proposed on December 26 by Muslims here with support from the IPTA was postponed citing police embargo, even as the police here said that rally organisers had to take permission from the subdivisional magistrate’s office.