Kolkata BJP State President Dilip Ghosh, in another verbal onslaught amid the sensitive time around the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), has said that if needed, “50 lakh Muslim infiltrators will be identified and chased out of the country”.
https://twitter.com/ANI/
#WATCH Dilip Ghosh, West Bengal BJP Chief in North 24 Parganas: 50 lakh Muslim infiltrators will be identified, if needed they will be chased out of the country. Firstly their names will be removed from voters’ list then Didi (CM Mamata Banerjee) can’t appease anyone. pic.twitter.com/ezY0HTWmB7
— ANI (@ANI) January 19, 2020
Addressing a crowd at a rally in North 24 Parganas, he went on a tirade against West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee saying, “Firstly, the names of Muslim infiltrators will be removed from the voters’ list, and then Didi cannot appease anyone.”
Mentioning that Mamata Banerjee would face a reduction in voter share in the upcoming 2021 State Assembly elections following the removal of the names of infiltrators from the list, he said, “Once this is done, Didi’s votes will be reduced in the coming elections, we will get 200 seats, she will not even get 50 seats.”
He also took a dig at the other Opposition parties who he said had “fuelled” protests against the CAA and NRC saying, “Their hearts bleed for infiltrators”.
His current statement comes just days after he said that people killed in the anti-CAA-NRC protests were ‘shot like dogs’ in the states of Assam and Uttar Pradesh. After this too, he had made a comment on Gorkhas, angering the community and also called a group of artistes protesting the CAA and NRC, “spineless devils” and “parasites”.
Though the BJP has, on the face of it, apparently given him an earful, Ghosh has stood by his statements. Also, his re-election as the BJP Unit President for the next three years just goes to show that at the national level, the party is confident of his leadership in the state and is ready to support his contentious statements even if they stoke communal sentiments.
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