Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday said that the Narendra Modi-led government will implement the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and that nobody can stop it while addressing the audience at the Kolkata rally organized to launch the BJP’s Lok Sabha campaign.
Alleging Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal who has opposed the law, has “destroyed” the state, he attacked her for failing to stop “infiltration” across the state border, saying, “Voter cards and Aadhaar cards are being openly and illegally distributed to infiltrators and she is silent!”.
While Banerjee has been strongly opposing the CAA since 2019, and supporting infiltration, Shah opined that a state with so much infiltration cannot develop.
“CAA is the law of the country”, he said.
Acknowledging the significant turnout at the public rally, at the historic Dharmatala, Shah confidently interpreted it as a reflection of people’s changed sentiments.
He professed that the BJP will succeed in the 2026 assembly elections, with a two-third majority in the state. “The BJP’s performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls will create the foundation of its win in the assembly polls,” he said.
He accused Banerjee and Trinamool Congress of appeasement, infiltration, corruption and political violence in the state, and urged the public to oust them by casting their votes for BJP.
Shah was quoted as saying “In the entire country, election-related violence is highest in Bengal. 212 BJP workers have been killed in West Bengal; people will seek justice for these murders through their votes in the 2026 assembly polls” as reported by ANI. According to the reports, the BJP had won its highest ever in 2019 i.e. 18 of the state’s 42 seats.
Setting the tone for a favourable response in the elections, Shah turned to the implementation of the controversial CAA, which has been in limbo for more than three years now as the central government is still working on its rules, and affirmed that the beneficiaries of the law have as much a right to citizenship as anyone else.
Despite the outrage CAA had caused pre-pandemic, with many denouncing it as “unconstitutional”, the Central government stands strong on implementing it. Moreover, on November 26th, Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Kumar Mishra said that the final draft of the CAA would be ready by March 30, 2024.
The CAA which was passed by Parliament on December 12, 2019, seeks to grant Indian citizenship to Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Parsi, and Buddhist migrants from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.
