Oppn speaking Pak's language on Citizenship Bill: PM

On a day when the issue of Citizenship Amendment Bill has raised a heated debate in Parliament, with Opposition parties drawing parallels with Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany to target the government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked “Pakistan” to derail Opposition arguments.

“The language of the Opposition is the language of Pakistan, comma and full stop,” Modi is learnt to have said at a meeting of BJP Parliamentary Party.

In the meeting, Modi also said that the proposed legislation will be written in "golden letters" in history.

Modi, who hailed the decision to bring CAB as “historic”, asked the party MPs to drive home the bill's message among people in their constituencies and apprise them of the NDA government's work in the last five and half years, particularly the measures taken in last six months.

Immediately after coming to power, the Modi 2:0 government took some landmark decisions, including the abrogation of special status from Jammu and Kashmir that was announced in Parliament on August 5.

Addressing reporters after the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi told reporters that the Prime Minister spoke about people who faced religious persecution in the neighboring countries and then had to live a life of uncertainty in India, as they were not given citizenship immediately. He said such people will get "permanent relief" once the proposed law comes into effect.

Asking party MPs to bust “myths” being spread about the Bill, the Prime Minister told party members to take the issue beyond Parliament after the passage of the bill and go into streets to spread awareness about it.

The view in the BJP is that there is groundswell support among its Hindutva constituency for the CAB, which will be followed up with a national level NRC to weed out infiltrators. Since the CAB will take care of the issue of Hindu migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the criticism amid the BJP support constituency, of large number of Hindu Bengalis having been left out from the NRC list in Assam, will also be addressed.

In West Bengal, where Assembly polls are due in 2021, the BJP has made a big issue of illegal infiltration from Bangladesh. But while the saffron party saw a nine-fold jump in number of its Lok Sabha seats in 2019, winning 18 from the mere two in 2014, it lost in all the three Assembly seats in the recently concluded by-polls.

It is believed that Trinamool Congress campaign around the exclusion of Hindu Bengalis from NRC list was also one of the reasons for the loss. In a number of states including Karnataka, the BJP is raising the tempo on NRC issue.