Kalimpong (West Bengal): The BJP will scrap Article 370 of the Constitution which grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir and introduce ‘National Register for Citizens’ (NRC) across the country if voted to power again, BJP chief Amit Shah said Thursday, raking up the two hugely disputed issues.
On the campaign trail in West Bengal, Shah also accused Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee of questioning the air strikes to ‘appease’ her minority vote bank, and demanded that she clarify whether she too favoured a separate Prime Minister for Jammu and Kashmir like her ally National Conference leader Omar Abdullah.
“We will remove Article 370 from Kashmir after forming the next BJP government at the Centre,” Shah told an election rally here in this constituency where the party has fielded industrialist Raju Singh Bisht.
Shah alleged that Banerjee, who is vehemently opposed to the contentious NRC that is currently restricted to Assam, was ‘misleading’ people, and vowed to introduce it in every state after winning the polls.
“It is our commitment to bring in NRC across the country to chuck out each and every infiltrator. Unlike Mamata Banerjee, we don’t treat infiltrators as our vote bank. For us national security is supreme. We would ensure that each and every Hindu and Buddhist refugee gets citizenship of this country,” asserted Shah.
Banerjee has repeatedly claimed the NRC, which seeks to weed out illegal migrants from Assam, will turn even bonafide Indian citizens into refugees.
Shah also took on the West Bengal Chief Minister for ‘questioning the veracity’ of the Indian Air Force’s strike in Pakistan’s Balakot.
“We came to know that Mamata Banerjee was mourning the air strikes. It is quite obvious that the air strikes will be mourned in Pakistan. But why is Mamata Banerjee mourning? Is she doing so in order to appease her minority vote bank? This is a shame,” Shah said, attacking the West Bengal leader.
Mocking the ‘grand opposition alliance’ proposed by Banerjee, the BJP chief wondered why the Congress and CPI(M) were criticising the TMC if they were her allies.
“I wonder what kind of grand alliance Banerjee is proposing. She is saying vote for the grand alliance. Why are the Congress and CPI(M) criticising her TMC if they are allies at the Centre. The fact is no one is willing to stand with Banerjee. This alliance neither has a leader nor a policy,” Shah pointed out.
Seeking to reach out to tea garden workers, who constitute a sizeable section of the electorate, Shah said his party’s manifesto has promised to provide a pension of Rs 3,000 to them after the age of 60.
Shah has set a somewhat ambitious target of winning 23 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP had won only two seats in the state in 2014.