Citizenship Act, Bengali pride to be Mamata’s key weapons against BJP

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee seems to have decided to couple BJP’s key weapons the contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Act issue along with her own narrative of attack by “outsiders” on Bengali pride to take on the saffron party in the 2021 Assembly elections.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo in her speech at the Martyr’s Day rally on Tuesday made it clear that she would not allow the saffron party put the issues of NRC and NPR on the backseat by using the Covid-19 pandemic. Her reference to the Delhi riots showed that she will use her anti-CAA and NRC stand as a major poll plank in the 2021 Assembly elections.

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With this, she sought to remind the minority community in Bengal of the anxiety they have over NRC and CAA and further consolidate their support for her party. In Bengal, where about 28% of the population belong to the minority community, their votes will be a key factor in the backdrop of the often violent anti-CAA agitation in the state.

By invoking the anti-CAA agitations, Mamata is also trying to gain the support of Hindu refugees in the border districts where the BJP had achieved significant success in the last Lok Sabha elections. She has repeatedly accused the BJP of making false claims that Hindu refugees in Bengal will be granted Indian citizenship under the CAA even as they already have access to citizenship rights in the state.

Urging TMC workers to ensure that all BJP candidates lose their deposits in the 2021 Assembly elections, she referred to the saffron party leaders as “outsiders.” Not only did she vow not to let “outsiders” run Bengal but also invoked the Bengali-non Bengali binary by saying that “Gujarat will not run Bengal” alluding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah’s Gujarat origins.

She seems to have renewed her attack on BJP as “outsiders” to Bengal to offset the saffron party’s persistent attack on her government over its handling of the Covid-19 crisis. During the agitations against NRC, she had alleged that the BJP was targeting Bengalis in the name of driving out infiltrators.