The vice-president of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) West Bengal unit, Chandra Kumar Bose, has raised his voice against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) saying India is open to all religions and communities.
“If #CAA2019 is not related to any religion why are we stating – Hindu,Sikh,Boudha, Christians, Parsis & Jains only! Why not include #Muslims as well? Let’s be transparent,” Bose said on Twitter on Monday.
If #CAA2019 is not related to any religion why are we stating – Hindu,Sikh,Boudha, Christians, Parsis & Jains only! Why not include #Muslims as well? Let's be transparent
— Chandra Kumar Bose (@Chandrakbose) December 23, 2019
Don’t equate India or compare it with any other nation- as it’s a nation Open to all religions and communities, Bose, grandnephew of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, said in his subsequent tweet.
This comes on a day the party took out a march in support of the newly-enacted law in West Bengal. Led by the party’s Working President J.P. Nadda in an open jeep, with other top state party leaders walking on the road, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘Abhinandan Yatra’ (Thanksgiving rally) was organised to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for passing the Citizenship Amendment Act, which the party hopes would have a huge bearing in the eastern state by giving citizenship to lakhs of refugees – mainly Bengali Hindus – who came as refugees to West Bengal from Bangladesh.
Holding aloft 15,000 party flags and 3,000 tricolours which fluttered on a chilly winter afternoon, the BJP workers marched from Subodh Mallick Square in the city hub to near revolutionary leader Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s statue at Shyambazar Five Point Crossing in North Kolkata in an impressive show of strength.
The party has also launched a massive public awareness campaign on social media campaign and through its cadres to reach out to the people of the country and dispel their doubts on the issue.
Earlier, BJP-ally Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had demanded that Muslims should also be included in the CAA in sync with the democratic and secular principles of the country.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, grants citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Buddhists and Christians fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh and came to India on or before December 31, 2014.
