Kailash Vijayvargiya, the senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has come out and said that the controversial citizenship amendment act will be implemented as early as January of next year.
Last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party introduced a bill to grant citizenship to the minority communities of the neighboring nations who have been subjected to religious discrimination. This was followed by the massive backlash against the bill as protests broke out in all the major cities across the nation which only came to a halt due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Now, the senior leader of the party has revealed that the implementation will begin soon. He said,
“We are hopeful that the process of granting citizenship to refugees under the CAA will begin from January next year. The center has passed the CAA with the honest intention of granting citizenship to persecuted refugees coming to our country from neighboring nations.”
TMC Leader Hits Out
This statement from the national general secretary of the party has drawn criticism from the opposition party in West Bengal. A senior leader of the Trinamool Congress and the state minister Firhad Hakim said that the saffron party is trying to fool the people of West Bengal to attract votes. He said,
“What does the BJP mean by citizenship? If the Matuas are not citizens, how come they voted in assembly and parliamentary polls year after year? The BJP should stop fooling the people of West Bengal.”
The Matuas are the community of people who originally came from Bangladesh (East Pakistan) during the 1950s mostly escaping religious persecution. As of now, the community is 30 lakh in number and holds crucial pockets of the state. They influence at least 4 Lok sabha seats and close to 40 assembly seats. The community had voted in favor of BJP during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
