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Highlight
- Bengal BJP chief exuded confidence that CAA will be implemented before 2024 elections
- The ruling TMC said it would never allow it to be implemented in the state.
- The party’s Bengal chief said, BJP has a track record of keeping its promises
West Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar on Tuesday expressed confidence that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA will be implemented before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, saying the saffron party has a “track record of keeping its promises”.
The ruling Trinamool Congress, which has been opposing the Act, said it would never allow it to be implemented in the state and said such statements by BJP leaders are aimed at diverting attention from the Centre’s “failure in managing the economy”. .
“The BJP has a track record of keeping its promises. We promised to build a Ram temple, we have done it. CAA is our goal, and we will achieve it.
It will be implemented before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.”
The BJP’s promise to implement the controversial Act was a major election issue during the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 assembly elections in the state. The leaders of the saffron party consider this to be a laudable factor behind the growth of the BJP in the state.
Majumdar’s remarks came days after BJP MLA Asim Sarkar said that the delay in implementing the CAA would hurt the party’s support base among refugees as it created apprehensions among them.
Sarkar, the BJP MLA from Haringhata dominated by the Matua community, said the delay was creating confusion among those who relied on the saffron camp and ensured the party’s victory in 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019.
The ruling TMC, however, said that the CAA is being used as a “lollipop to fool the public ahead of the Lok Sabha elections”.
“We don’t believe in BJP’s divisive politics. It has failed to manage the country’s economy. It has failed on all fronts, and this statement just two years before the Lok Sabha elections is nothing but an attempt to fool It is public,” TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said.
The CAA seeks to provide Indian citizenship to persecuted minorities of Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who entered India on or before December 31, 2014.
The Center has said that the eligible beneficiaries of CAA will be given citizenship only after the rules are notified under the law.
Members of the Matua community, who make up a large part of the state’s scheduled caste population, had been migrating to West Bengal from erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) since the 1950s, mainly because of religious persecution.
The community, home to around three million Matuas in West Bengal, has electorally dominated at least five Lok Sabha seats and about 50 assembly seats in Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas districts.
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