Kolkata: Ridiculing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah for making contradictory statements on NRC, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday asked the Central dispensation to quit, saying people have started giving befitting replies to BJP’s “arrogance and audacity”.
She also demanded the BJP government at the Centre to withdraw the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).
“BJP take back NRC, take back CAA. You also quit. You have done enough. The country is burning, unemployment is at an all-time high, the economy is in very bad shape,” the Trinamool Congress supremo said.
Pointing to Modi’s comments at a rally in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday that his government has never even discussed the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Banerjee asked people to search and find the truth.
“India’s Home Minister says in the Parliament that ‘NRC exercise will be held all over India, we will do it’. But now the Prime Minister is saying the opposite. He says we haven’t discussed anything about NRC,” Banerjee said after leading a huge rally against the new citizenship law and NRC here.
The Trinamool chief noted that nowadays anything anybody says remains in the public domain.
“Whatever we have said, everything is in the public domain, from the Parliament to the streets. Whatever you are saying is also in the public domain,” she said, asking people to search and find out who has said what.
Banerjee said: “People have started giving befitting replies. You have received befitting replies in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Shed your arrogance and audacity.”
The CHief Minister highlighted that a movement was now raging against the BJP across India.
“This is a movement for protecting one’s rights. Bengal started it. Now people in Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jaharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab are doing the same,” she said.
Berating the BJP government, she said: “At times it plays the India versus Pakistan card, and at times it plays the Hindu versus Muslim card. This isn’t the way a government should function.”
On the Prime Minister’s dress jibe, she said, “Now they are saying a person can be recognised by his dress. You people wear beautiful dresses. In our state, males from all communities wear lungis and trousers.
“You can recognise somebody from his dress. Can’t you recognise somebody from his face or language?”
Addressing an election rally at Dumko in Jharkhand recently, Modi had said that “those people who are setting fire (to property) can be seen on TV… One can identify them by the clothes they are wearing.”
(IANS)
