Mamata Banerjee on Monday called for a jote (alliance) to oppose the “divisive” Citizenship (Amendment) Bill at any cost and vowed not to let a single person turn into a refugee, minutes after Union home minister Amit Shah had tabled the CAB in the Lok Sabha.
The Trinamul Congress chief urged everyone to unite forces to take a stand against the CAB and the National Register of Citizens which, according to her, are “discriminatory” and “unconstitutional”.
“Ashun, jote bnadhi (Come, let us form an alliance)…. It (CAB) is a divisive legislation. It must be opposed at any cost. We will not allow even one person to be deported from the country,” the chief minister said at an event in Kharagpur.
“First give roti, kapda, makaan (food, clothing and shelter). Don’t divide the people. Don’t divide the country,” she added.
Earlier in the day, in an apparent reference to the BJP government’s CAB plans, she had tweeted: “On this day in 1946, the Constituent Assembly met for the first time. My tribute to the founding fathers who created India’s Constitution. We must never tamper with the basic spirit of what is written in this great document.”
On Saturday, Mamata had described the resistance to the NRC-CAB push of the BJP as the “second war of Independence”.
“No divide and rule. Nothing is bigger than the country. People can have big political slogans. The CAB, the NRC — two sides of the same coin. We are all citizens. We all vote…. Who are you to take these decisions?” Mamata asked in Kharagpur, where she thanked the people for Trinamul’s victory in the Assembly bypoll.
“Who are you to determine who will get it and who will not? What to eat? Where to go? What to do? What is this? You have seen in Assam they have removed 19 lakh Hindu names from the list in the name of the NRC. One lakh Biharis were removed. They even removed Gorkhas, who have been the bravest fighters for our nation,” Mamata said.
The Bengal chief minister said the CAB or the NRC would never be allowed in the state as long as Trinamul was in power.
“I am telling you again and again, there is no need for worry over either the NRC or the CAB. Never, ever will we allow it in Bengal,” she said, adding that “at least 30 people” had taken their own lives in Bengal alone out of panic over the NRC.
“Some are trying to generate panic with political rhetoric, but let me make one thing abundantly clear. There will be no NRC and no CAB in reality. You cannot do it, not on the basis of caste or religion,” she said.
Mamata said the Centre should instead consider putting provisions similar to the green card in the US for those who are coming to India now. She asserted that it had no right to sit in judgement of citizenship of people who had been in the country for decades.
“Thirty, fifty, seventy, hundred years — since Independence, people who have been here for that long… how can the government even think of telling such people to leave the nation?” she asked.
“Some people only give bhaashan (lecture), not ration… nor life, livelihood, culture. They only want death for others. We are never going to be with them,” she added.
