Faux pas in BJP advertisement?

Committing faux pas with regard to the contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill appears to be the BJP's favourite pastime this election season.

It has now omitted reference to Sikhs in an advertisement promising the enactment of the Bill that provides citizenship to persecuted minorities in neighbouring countries.

In an advertisement 'A Fitting Response to Terrorism' released on the eve of the second phase of elections, it has promised the enactment of the law to "protect oppressed Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Christians in our neighbouring country".

BJP leaders put this to an oversight, saying "there is no need to read much into it".

This is not the first time that the BJP has committed a faux pas on the Bill. In the manifesto, which was released on April 8, there was no mention of Christians and Parsis in respect to the Bill. Later when it was pointed out, the online version added Christians but curiously left out Parsis.

In the English version of the manifesto, a sentence was constructed in such a way that it meant the party was making laws to "commit crimes against women" and correctly mentioned in Hindi version "changing the laws" to ensure time-bound investigation and trial of crime against women, particularly rape cases, in fast track courts". Questions were also raised about the BJP claim of doubling the current length of National Highway by building 60,000 km of National Highway with Congress pointing out that India already has 1.01 lakh km of NH.

As per the Citizenship Bill, which was placed by the Narendra Modi government in Parliament earlier but could not pass it, amendments will be made to relax rules to enable persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis and Christians in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to gain Indian citizenship easily.

This Bill had run into an opposition especially in the north-east states as a section argued that it was discriminatory to Muslims and citizenship should not be granted on the basis of religion.

However, BJP has taken up as one of its prominent campaign theme with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah raising the decibel levels on the issue.

The BJP believes that the Citizenship Bill would help them at least in Assam and Tripura where it hopes to woo Bengali Hindus.

The Opposition is accusing the BJP of communalising the campaign by raking up Citizenship Bill and extension of National Register of Citizens (NRC) across the country, which the saffron party claimed was to weed out of illegal immigrants. In his speeches, Shah had called those who cross over from Bangladesh as "termites" and "intruders".