Image Courtesy: indiatimes.com
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from its official twitter handle has deleted a tweet on Amit Shah’s comment on a pan-India NRC (National Register of Citizens). It is not clear when the tweet was deleted, but the move is quite surprising given the fact that Amit Shah has gone on record to say that come what may, there will be no going back on the NRC.
The deleted tweet
(Source – The Week)
Earlier this year during the LokSabha campaign, Amit Shah had promised to remove every single infiltrator from the country by implementing a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC). He had said, “We have promised in our manifesto that once Narendra Modi forms the government again, we will implement the NRC across the country. We will remove every single infiltrator from the country. And all the Hindu and Buddhist refugees…we will find each of them, give them Indian citizenship and make them residents here.”
During his rallies in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee has been one of the most vehement critics of the NRC, he had said that the BJP would ensure that each infiltrator would be thrown into the Bay of Bengal no matter how strongly it was opposed and by whom.
During his rallies, at first he never underlined the three countries from where religiously persecuted Hindus would be brought into India. He had said that wherever there were religiously persecuted Hindus, they would be taken into India and be given citizenship.
Keeping his stance undecided, he had targeted CM Banerjee saying that she was scaring the Gorkha community regarding the NRC and asked them not to be afraid of the NRC process. Later, ‘Gorkhas’ was changed to ‘Bengalis’.
To top it all, he had said that the refugees of the Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist, Jain and Christian communities would not be needed to furnish any documents to be featured in the NRC.
https://twitter.com/free_thinker/status/1207958337817460742
Amit Shah on CAA-NRC 7 pic.twitter.com/367eTUJ1M2
— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) December 20, 2019
Time and again, the Union Home Minister had statedthat after the CAA, the NRC would follow, no matter what.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z__6E5hPbHg
However, the protests against the CAA first started in Assam and Modi and Shah, both rushed to allay the fears of the Assamese people that the CAA would not affect their identity and culture.
https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1204981291730341888
I want to assure my brothers and sisters of Assam that they have nothing to worry after the passing of #CAB.
I want to assure them- no one can take away your rights, unique identity and beautiful culture. It will continue to flourish and grow.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 12, 2019
Neither the party, nor its leadership anticipated that their decision would spark nationwide protests and they completely did not expect that the students of the country would lead the agitation.
After the student agitation at the JamiaMilliaIslamia University (JMIU) and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) took a violent turn with the Delhi police’s indiscriminate lathi charge and tear gas shelling, the protests against the CAA and the impending NRC took the form of a new agitation against the ruling government.
Yet, Amit Shah sided with the Delhi police who have now become infamous for their attack on the students of the JamiaMilliaIslamia University saying –
https://twitter.com/AmitShah/status/1206986135752167425
मैं पूछना चाहता हूं कि आप पथराव करोगे, वाहनों में आग लगाओगे, नागरिकों का नुकसान करोगे तो क्या पुलिस एक्शन नहीं लेगी?
लॉ एंड ऑर्डर कैसे कंट्रोल में आयेगा?
अगर सारे छात्र थे तो अंदर से पथराव कौन कर रहा था?मैं फिर कहता हूँ कि इस सबकी मुख्य वजह कुछ राजनीतिक दलों का दुष्प्रचार है। pic.twitter.com/G69ExQodUL
— Amit Shah (@AmitShah) December 17, 2019
The NRC exercise in Assam saw 19 lakh people being excluded from the list. They are still running from pillar to post trying to prove their citizenship as Indian. Even in Assam, there were no set rules procedures saying who was eligible and who wasn’t and people are now thrown into detention camps until their fate is decided by the government.
And now, Shah has said during innumerable interviews to different channels and publications that the timeline for an all-India NRC has not been set yet. At a recently concluded economic conclave, answering a question about the NRC he said, “An exercise like NRC cannot be done in secrecy. We have not decided yet and these decisions cannot be taken by me alone. They need Cabinet approvals.”
Since the protests have begun the wake of the Citizenship Amendment Bill becoming an Act, both Shah and PM Modi have gone on record to say that the citizens of India will not be affected by it. But the youth of India are not having it anymore. The repeated attempts of Modi and Shah have failed to quieten or reassure the public of India that the CAA and NRC will not divide the country into religious lines or affect the marginalized gravely.
Keeping Shah’s words in mind, it can be seen that the party is making arbitrary decisions with regards to something as serious as citizenship; especially when it is against the Constitution to grant it on religious grounds.
With the economic deceleration ironically at its peak and the unemployment rate at its highest, the youth of the country feel like this is just one more tactic of the BJP government to divert the attention of the citizens from the real issues plaguing the country and divide it on religious lines.
But what does it mean now when the party has deleted the tweet from its handle? Is the party trying to distance itself from Shah’s remarks or is it a slow back-off from the implementation of the CAA and the NRC?
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