The Trinamool Congress has hit back at Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda over his recent remark on the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Party MP Mahua Moitra said that Bengal will 'show the door to the saffron party before showing papers'.
"Listen up @BJP - we will show you the door long before we show you our papers!" she wrote on Twitter.
Nadda during his Siliguri visit on Monday said that implementation of the CAA has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and asserted that the law would be implemented soon.
Nadda, who was speaking at a meeting of social groups of north Bengal, accused the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal of indulging in "divide and rule politics" in the state to serve the political interests of her party - the TMC, unlike the BJP which "works for the development of all".
"As far as the CAA is concerned, it has already been passed in parliament. All of you will get the benefits of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. We are committed to it," Nadda said.
"Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its implementation got delayed. But as the situation is slowly improving, the work has started. The rules are now being framed and CAA will be implemented very soon. Under this act all the eligible people will definitely get Indian citizenship," Nadda told the social groups, who included Dalits, Gorkhas, Rajbanshis and other tribes.
Various social groups of the region had requested Nadda to ensure early implementation of the CAA as there is a vast population of refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan in north Bengal.
As the local sentiment was in favour of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill which later became an act, the saffron party had made deep inroads in the region, once considered a TMC bastion, by bagging seven of the eight Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Assembly polls are due in the state in April-May next year, and the fight for power promises to be a tough one as Banerjee will seek to return as chief minister for the third straight time.
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