Union Home Minister Amit Shah has asserted that no one can stop the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act as it is the law of the land and accused the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, of misleading people on the issue.
Addressing a closed-door meeting of the State BJP's social media and IT wing members at the National Library here on December 26, Mr. Shah said it is the party's commitment to implement the CAA.
Mr. Shah expressed confidence that the party will bag more than 35 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the State. In the 2019 polls, the saffron camp had secured 18 seats.
Also read: Understanding the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019
The Bengal BJP media cell shared a list of pointers of Mr. Shah's speech at the closed-door programme. Later in the evening, it also shared a few video clips of Mr. Shah's speech.
"We have to work to form a BJP government in West Bengal after the next assembly polls. A BJP government will mean the end of infiltration, cow smuggling and providing citizenship to religiously persecuted people through CAA," he said at the party programme, the video clip of which was shared by the BJP's media wing.
Mr. Shah launched a scathing attack on Ms. Banerjee for misleading people on the issue of CAA.
"At times, she tries to mislead the people, the refugees, whether CAA will be at all implemented in the country or not. I want to say this clearly that CAA is the law of the land and no one can stop its implementation. This is the commitment of our party," he said.
The TMC led by Mamata Banerjee has been opposing the CAA, which was passed by Parliament in 2019.
Also read: CAA rules to be framed by March 2024, says Union Minister
The promise of implementing the controversial CAA had been a major poll plank of the BJP in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. The saffron party's leaders consider it a plausible factor that led to the rise of the BJP in Bengal.
The CAA seeks to grant Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities like Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who had entered India on or before December 31, 2014.
