A protestor holds a placard during a demonstration against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Credit: PTI File Photo
Kolkata: The politics surrounding “CAA”, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, is re-emerging in West Bengal with the approaching Lok Sabha elections.
The two leading political opponents in the state, the Trinamool and the BJP, have begun invoking the subject of citizenship rights.
Bengal, and adjoining states in the east, have a substantial population of the people (minority in the earlier country) who were forced to cross over into India from (now) Bangladesh in the yesteryears, fearing persecution.
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerejee, on Thursday, while addressing a gathering cautioned members of the state’s minority community that Bengal needs to be kept with a Trinamool-steered government.
Banerjee has stated that if her party gets less seats, then BJP’s “excesses” will further increase in different forms. “CAA-NRC, you have seen,” she said, adding that what’s being put forth as “CAA” be offered as a responsibility to the district magistrates. “Don’t get misled. Remember, as long as we are there… If anyone tries to harm you… I was your guard, I am, and will continue to be so,” she stated.
Earlier this week, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who addressed BJP’s social media volunteers in Kolkata, clarified his party’s stand on the issue of giving citizenship rights to persecuted minorities coming from India’s neighbouring countries, in accordance with the enacted law.
Shah stated that “didi” (elder sister, as Banerjee is addressed in Bengal), many times, is “misleading” the “sharnarthis” (refugees, mostly from Bangladesh in eastern Indian states). “Whether CAA will be enforced, or won’t be. The law paused after being enacted. Today, I want to speak it out in front of all of you. CAA is the law of this country. None can stop it (from being enforced),” Shah said.
“All (eligible individuals) will get citizenship. This is our party’s commitment. Those brothers, who have come over after facing hardships, who have been driven out with the fright of conversion…To protect their honour, respect, assets, decent living, is the responsibility of every Indian. This (CAA) will happen. Didi, you don’t worry,” Shah assured.
“Didi, the CAA is the law of the land and no one can stop its implementation,” the BJP leader also mentioned on X.
Responding to Shah’s remarks, Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh, has stated that “four years and 17 days have elapsed since CAA was passed in the Parliament, leaving a trail of at least 83 lives lost in the chaos that ensued”.
Ghosh added that the ministry of home affairs, that Shah represents, has till date “sought nine extensions to frame rules that will govern the Act. The new deadline is 2024”. The Trinamool spokesperson, on X, further mentioned that CAA be called a “cynical political game by the BJP to deceive, manipulate and woo voters ahead of elections and nothing more”.