We will scrap Article 370 of the Constitution which grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir and introduce National Register for Citizens across India if voted to power again, BharatiyaJanata Party chief Amit Shah said Thursday.
On the campaign trail in West Bengal’s Kalimpong inDarjeeling LokSabha seat and Raigang seat in North Dinajpur, he also accusedTMC supremoMamata Banerjee of questioning the air strikes to “appease herminority vote bank”, and demanded that she must clarify whether she toofavoured a separate prime minister for Jammu and Kashmir like her ally NationalConference leader Omar Abdullah.
“We will remove Article 370 from Kashmir after forming thenext BJP government at the Centre,” Shah told an election rally at Kalimpong inDarjeeling LokSabha constituency where the party has fielded industrialist RajuSingh Bisht.
Calling illegal migrants from Bangladesh “termites”, Shahsaid at another rally in Raiganj that his party will throw them out aftercoming to power at the Centre for a second consecutive term.
Shah alleged that Banerjee, who is vehemently opposed to thecontentious National Register of Citizens (NRC) that is currently restricted toAssam, was “misleading” people, and vowed to “introduce it in every state afterwinning the polls”.
“It is our commitment to bring in NRC across the country tochuck out each and every infiltrator. Unlike Mamata Banerjee, we don’t treatinfiltrators as our vote bank. For us national security is supreme. We wouldensure that each and every Hindu and Buddhist refugee gets citizenship of thiscountry,” he said.
Banerjee has repeatedly claimed the NRC, which seeks to weedout illegal migrants from Assam, will turn even bonafide Indian citizens intorefugees.
The NRC got mired in a massive controversy after the namesof around 40 lakh people, living in Assam for decades, were omitted from thecomplete draft that was released last year.
He alleged that the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congressgovernment in West Bengal was only interested in appeasing minorities. The BJPchief claimed that TMC stood for “Tushtikaran, (appeasement), mafia and chitfunds. Illegal migrants are like termites. They are eating our foodgrains thatshould go to the poor, they are taking away our jobs. The T of the TMC standsfor ‘Tushtikaran, M for mafia and C for chitfund (scams),” Shah said.
He also took on the West Bengal chief minister for”questioning the veracity” of the Indian Air Force’s strike in Pakistan’sBalakot to avenge the killing of 40 CRPF personnel in Kashmir, saying the”IAF’s assault was mourned in only two places: Pakistan and Mamata Banerjee’soffice”. “We came to know that Mamata Banerjee was mourning the air strikes. Itis quite obvious that the air strikes will be mourned in Pakistan. But why isMamata Banerjee mourning? She is mourning in order to appease her minority votebank. This is a shame,” Shah said, attacking the West Bengal leader.
Banerjee and other opposition leaders may be interested intalks with Pakistan but the government believes in responding to their “bulletswith canon balls”, he said.
“Apko (Mamata) Pakistan kesaathiluilu (I love you)karnahaintohkijiye. Lekin agar Pakistan golimaregatoh hum golamarenge (If youare interested in love with Pakistan, you can do that but we would respond totheir bullets with canon balls),” Shah said, referring to the popular love songfrom film Saudagar released in the early 1990s. Mocking the grand opposition allianceproposed by Banerjee, Shah wondered why the Congress and CPI(M) werecriticising 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) criticisingher TMC if they are allies at the Centre. The fact is no one is willing tostand with Banerjee. This alliance neither has a leader nor a policy,” he said.
Under the TMC rule “all three—mother, motherland and peopleare suffering”, he said, referring to the ‘Ma, Maati and Manush’ slogan of WestBengal’s ruling party.
“Mothers are now bereft of love, infiltrators have taken away our land and people are being brutalised and killed,” he said.