In a virtual launch of Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) campaign for next year's assembly elections in West Bengal, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah today raised the issue of the amended Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and rebuked Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her opposition to the law.
Addressing an online rally of party workers, Shah said Banerjee had only put up a "token" resistance to the amended CAA and asked her to give a point-by-point elaboration of her stance.
"The people of Bengal will reduce Mamata Banerjee to a political refugee because of her stance on CAA," Shah said.
The amended CAA seeks to give Indian citizenship to Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, Parsi and Sikh refugees who have migrated from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan till 2014.
Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress and other opposition parties of India termed the amendment as "discriminatory" towards Muslims, a charge denied by the Indian government, which maintains that all Muslims who are citizens of India would continue to be so.
The opposition to the amended CAA -- passed by both houses of Indian parliament in December last year -- had solidified into weeks of nationwide street protests, often marred by sustained violence and brutal police crackdown that left scores dead and injured, before the Covid-19 pandemic put a brake on it.
On May 30, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to mark the completion of one year in power in his second successive stint in the top post, had cited the amended CAA as one of the major achievements of his government, terming it as an "expression of India's compassion and spirit of inclusiveness."
Shah, at today's online rally, said that the name "Corona Express" given by Mamata to trains carrying thousands of migrant workers back to West Bengal from other parts of India, would become her "exit route" from the state post-Covid-19.
"The name 'Corona Express' that you have given, Mamata didi, will become your exit route. You've added salt to the wounds of the migrant workers and they will not forget this," Shah said, addressing BJP workers online.
Shah was referring to Mamata Banerjee's criticism of the central government for running special trains ferrying migrant workers, amid a surge in coronavirus cases across India.
"They are stuffing the Shramik trains full of people, there is no social distancing, no food, no water, nothing," the chief minister had said.
"What are they trying to do? Are they running Shramik trains or are they trying to run Corona Express?" she had questioned, during a media briefing.
Banerjee and Shah have sparred bitterly throughout the coronavirus crisis and the lockdown, with the Bengal chief minister accusing Shah and others in the central government of trying to undermine her government's efforts to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Shah said the BJP may have won 303 seats in Lok Sabha polls last year "but for me, the most important are the 18 seats we pocketed in Bengal."
