KOLKATA: Union home minister Amit Shah has once again asserted that the NRC exercise would be conducted across the entire country, while assuring that his government would ensure not a single (non-Muslim) refugee is driven out by first passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that grants nationality to all Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist refugees. He also stressed that the government would not allow “even a single infiltrator” to stay in this country.
Sharpening his focus on West Bengal, Shah accused the Trinamool Congress government here of misleading people on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and asked BJP activists to reach out to every refugee family in Bengal and assure them that they would not be deported.
“People of Bengal are being misled about the NRC… The [Narendra] Modi government wont drive out a single refugee. I assure all Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain refugees they wont have to leave the country, they will get Indian citizenship and enjoy all the rights of an Indian national,” he said at seminar on NRC, organised on Tuesday by BJP in Kolkata.
Blaming Trinamool for thwarting the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Rajya Sabha, Shah said, “Those who are shedding crocodile tears in defence of refugees are the ones who stood in the way of passing the CAB Bill. Things have changed now. We can pass the Bill.”
The CAB proposes to provide citizenship to all non-Muslim refugees staying in India on or before December 31, 2014.
Asserting that the Modi government was resolute on driving out all infiltrators, Shah said “no country can afford to sustain the pressure of infiltration”.
Adding that their presence is a threat to the countrys security, the home minister pointed out that Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee had drawn the attention of then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on the same issue in Lok Sabha way back in 2005.
“Mamata didi had then thrown a sheaf of papers at the Speaker,” he said referring to Banerjees dramatic protest against illegal Bangladeshi migrants finding place on Bengals voters list. “At that time these people used to vote for the communists. Now, they have become her vote bank,” Shah said adding that “political interests cant get priority [for Mamata] over the countrys interests”.
The BJP president said the scenario in Bengal has started changing after “the people of Syama Prasad Mookerjees land” elected 1Read More – Source
