Darjeeling: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who took her fight against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) to the hills here Wednesday, sought clarifications from Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the clauses of the new law, even as she accused the Centre of spreading lies on the issue.
Addressing a rally after leading a mega fourkm-long protest march through the serpentine roads of this Himalayan town, Banerjee said the Centre is trying to push CAA only in non-BJP ruled states.
Banerjee claimed all states except West Bengal have attended the meeting on the National Population Register (NPR) in New Delhi due to fear of BJP-led Union government.
“Every day the home minister is giving new sermons. Yesterday (Tuesday) he said that we (opposition parties) are misleading the people. I would like to ask him to clarify whether a person will be declared foreigner and then allowed to apply for citizenship under the CAA,” Banerjee said, addressing the rally in Hindi.
Reiterating that the CAA, the NPR and the NRC won’t be allowed in West Bengal, the chief minister said before forcing any citizen out of the state, the BJP ‘has to throw her out’ first.
“Due to NRC in Assam, lakhs of Gorkhas have been rendered homeless. We will not allow that to happen in Darjeeling as long as I am here,” she asserted.
Banerjee’s comments come a day after Shah had accused the opposition parties of ‘misleading’ people on the CAA and said that the law will not be scrapped despite protests over it.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo, who has been at the forefront of anti-CAA agitations, has led 10 protest marches and addressed six rallies in various parts of the state since the issue snowballed into a major political firestorm last December.
PTI