On Mamata Banerjee's Home Turf, BJP's JP Nadda Leads Mega Pro-CAA Rally In Kolkata

As part of its outreach campaign to ‘educate’ people over the CAA-NRC issue, the BJP launched a mega rally in West Bengal’s capital city Kolkata on Monday. The rally was led by BJP working president JP Nadda. Thousands of supporters lined up on the streets of the city. The march that began form Hind cinema in central Kolkata and will culminate at Shyambazar. Apart from Nadda, other prominent faces in the rally were Kailash Vijavargiya, Dilip Ghosh and Roopa Ganguly. The rally is seen as a direct fight between the BJP and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has been vociferously opposing the citizenship law. Banerjee had said that the Bengal government won’t implement NRC.

However, the Home Ministry has said that the states have no say in this matter as it is not state subject. West Bengal had witnessed violent protests and arson against the CAA and the proposed nationwide implementation of National Register of Citizens (NRC) during December 13-17. After week of massive protests against the citizenship law, the nation is now witnessing some pro-CAA events also.

A day before on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused his rivals of stoking fears among people and misleading Muslims over the amended citizenship law, and asserted that his government’s schemes have never done any discrimination on the basis of religion. Addressing a rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan, he said the citizenship law and the proposed National Register of Citizens have nothing to do with Indian Muslims. "Muslims being misled, I have always ensured that documents will never come in way of development schemes and their beneficiaries," said PM Modi.

A lie is being spread that this government had brought the law to snatch people’s rights, the prime minister said and dared rivals to find anything discriminatory in his work.

Unable to challenge him in elections, PM Modi asserted, his rivals have resorted to dividing the country through rumours.

The prime minister also asked people at Delhi rally to stand up to show respect for Parliament and lawmakers who passed Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. The venue where PM Modi is speaking is over a kilometre away from Old Delhi's Daryaganj that was hit by violence on Friday.