Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said no matter how much the Congress opposed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the BJP government at the Centre would rest only after granting citizenship to members of six minority religions from the three neighbouring countries, and no one could stop it.
“They are the sons and daughters of the country too. Even they enjoy the same right over the country as you and I,” he claimed at a public rally in Jabalpur.
Attacking the Congress, Mr. Shah said if it didn’t retract from its stand, “whatever is left of it will also be wiped out. They need to understand the pulse of the nation, know what people want. Instead, they fear their vote bank.”
The Minister said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee were misleading people over the law and had even instigated riots. “We launched an awareness campaign to contain the misinformation being spread,” he added.
Several leaders during the partition, including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, claimed Mr. Shah, had offered to embrace the minorities from Pakistan and Bangladesh, whenever they wished to cross over to escape “human rights violations and atrocities there. Yet Rahul Gandhi pays them no heed.”, he said.
Nankana Sahib attack
“I want to ask the human rights champions,” he said, “when atrocities were being committed in Pakistan against minorities, didn’t they see their human rights? Don’t these people have those rights too? The attack on Nankana Sahib has brought the atrocities in front of the world.”
Mr. Shah dared Mr. Gandhi and Ms. Banerjee to show provisions in the Act that would take away the citizenship of minorities, including Muslims. “Instead, the law is about granting citizenship. When the Congress divided the country on religious lines, our leaders told minorities they were welcome in India, and would be given citizenship and respect,” he said.
Pointing to the purported drop in minority numbers in Pakistan and Bangladesh over decades, Mr. Shah said, “I want to ask the deaf and blind leaders of the Congress to tell us where were all these people lost. They were converted, killed and women suffered atrocities.”
And they came to India leaving everything behind, he said. “Yet they didn’t abandon their religion, wanting to practice the one they were born into. To save their religion and respect, to escape the human rights violations there, they came here,” Mr. Shah claimed.
Exhorting party workers to go door-to-door to spread a positive message and seek support on the CAA, and even the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the surgical strikes in Pakistan and the dilution of Article 370 of the Constitution, he said the party planned to conduct 500 meetings, 250 press conferences and reach out to three crore families across Madhya Pradesh.
Alleging that the Congress spoke the language of Pakistan, Mr. Shah said: “They both oppose the CAA, ask for evidence after surgical strikes and said Kashmiris were facing injustice as Article 370 was diluted. All this for vote bank politics.”
“Some boys of the Jawaharlal Nehru University raised anti-national slogans, saying the country should be divided into a thousand parts. Shouldn’t they be put in jail,” he asked.
As per the gazette notification issued by the Centre on January 10, the CAA, under which non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, will be given Indian citizenship, came into force from January 10 .
(With PTI inputs)
