Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday again asserted that her government would not allow the Centre to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, in the state.
“We are against this (the CAA) and will oppose it... People’s rights are important to us,” she said when asked to react to the Centre’s recent decision to issue citizenship certificates to non-Muslim immigrants in Gujarat.
Mamata was speaking to the media at Calcutta airport before leaving for Chennai.
She made the comment in the backdrop of a Union home ministry notification that had granted citizenship to members of non-Muslim communities, who came from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and now live in Gujarat.
The Centre granted citizenship to them under the 1955 citizenship law However, the BJP leadership in Bengal has tried to showcase it as the first step to roll out the CAA.
Mamata dubbed the home ministry’s decision a political move with an eye on Gujarat polls. “They are doing it in Gujrat. But we will not allow them (Centre) to do it here. We are all citizens of India... This is my theory,” Mamata told the reporters.
Attacking the Narendra Modi government, she said: "They are playing with it in Gujarat only because of the ensuing Assembly elections (there).”
“We are totally against this...and oppose it. Everyone knows in the country (the Centre's plan).... What I told earlier, I will still stick to it,” she said and added that “people’s rights” were more important than politics or election”.
Mamata had earlier stated that the CAA was meant to “deceive people and her party would oppose it outright”.
Senior Matua leader and BJP MP Shantanu Thakur on Tuesday reiterated her apprehension of Mamata’s rigid stand opposing the CAA and pointed to it as a hurdle to implementing the citizenship matrix in Bengal because of the country’s federal structure.
“In a federal system implementation of a decision needs the support of the state government. The citizenship commitment is being rolled from Gujarat...This is the first step towards implementation of CAA too” Thakur said.
Reacting to Mamata's Wednesday comment, Shantanu said: “It could be done easily in Gujarat because the state has a BJP government. It (implementing CAA in Bengal), would be a difficult task because of Trinamul’s rigid opposition to it.”
Like Trinamul, the CPM is also opposed to the CAA and sees the law as BJP’s attempt to polarise the country.
“We will not allow the CAA to be implemented in the country. The BJP cannot impose any such decision without any consensus. None of the secular parties in the country will allow this to happen,” CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty said.
