Is this the BJP's strategy to win the West Bengal elections?

New Delhi Ta-11 Dec 2019, Wednesday

Political observers believe the BJP leadership has fielded five of its West Bengal MPs in favor of the Citizenship Improvement Bill in view of the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal.

It is noteworthy that before the introduction of the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been fiercely opposed to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in her state.

The BJP leader believes that if the five Bengali MPs of the BJP can take up the issue of the citizenship reform bill, it will have a strong impact on the West Bengal Assembly elections of 2021.

The five Bengal MPs who defended the bill on Monday included West Bengal state BJP president Dilip Ghosh, Mahila Morcha president Loket Chatterjee, Darjeeling MP Raju Bishta, Shantanu Thakur and Soumitra Khan.

Shantanu Thakur is the leader of the Matua community who fled India through Bangladesh for fear of religious persecution. Soumitra Khan is a leader who was in the Trinamool Congress before the election and later joined the BJP. Thus, five MPs from West Bengal participated in the arguments in favor of the Citizenship Amendment Bill.

In West Bengal alone, one crore people came from Bangladesh. Congress and the Trinamool Congress have long accused the Left governments of using these intruders as a vote bank. Now, the Trinamool Congress considers these people as their vote banks, so Mamata strongly opposes the bill and the NRC.

It is worth remembering here that on October 1, Home Minister Amit Shah addressed a gathering in Kolkata, saying that the Citizenship Reform Bill would protect non-Muslims who were out of the NRC.