Congress always avoided taking tough decisions: PM Modi

On the day the issue of the Citizenship Amendment Bill raised a heated debate in Parliament with Opposition parties drawing parallels of the Nazi regime of Hitler to target the government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invoked “Pakistan” to derail the Opposition arguments.

“The language of the Opposition is the language of Pakistan comma and full stop,” Modi is learned to have said at a meeting of the BJP Parliamentary Party.

In the meeting, Modi also said the proposed legislation will be written in "golden letters" in history.

Later speaking in Rajya Sabha BJP President and Home Minister Amit Shah also accused Congress leaders of echoing Pakistan's narrative.

"Why there is a similarity between the statement given by Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan and the remarks made by Congress leaders. There was similarity in the statements of Pakistan and Congress leaders even when India carried out a surgical strike against Pakistan and then when the government abrogated provisions of Article 370 (that took away the special status of Jammu and Kashmir). Now again on Citizenship Amendment Bill, the statements made by Congress leaders are the same what leaders from Pakistan said yesterday."

Modi, who in the Parliamentary party meeting, hailed the decision to bring CAB as “historic” asked the party MPs to drive home the message from the bill among people in their constituencies and also apprise them of the work done by the NDA government in last five and half years and particularly the measures taken in last six months.

Immediately after coming to power Modi 2:0 government took some landmark decisions including the abrogation of special status from Jammu and Kashmir that was announced in Parliament on August 5.

In the on-going assembly election campaign for Jharkhand, top BJP leadership also repeatedly invoked the Supreme Court decision in favour of Ram Temple to hammer home the point that how the Modi government resolved the issue pending for decades which Congress was delaying.

Addressing reporters after the BJP Parliamentary Party meeting, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi told reporters that the Prime Minister spoke about people who faced religious persecution in the neighboring countries and then had to live a life of uncertainty in India as they were not given citizenship immediately. He said such people will get "permanent relief" once the proposed law comes into effect.

Asking party MPs to bust “myths” being spread about the Bill, the Prime Minister told the party members to take the issue beyond Parliament after the passage of the bill and go into streets to spread awareness about the bill.

The view in the BJP is that there is groundswell support among its Hindutva constituency for the CAB, which will be followed up with a national level NRC to weed out infiltrators. Since the CAB will take care of the issue of Hindu migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the criticism amid the BJP support constituency of a large number of Hindu Bengalis having been left out from the NRC list in Assam will also be addressed.

In West Bengal where assembly polls are due in 2021, the BJP has made a big issue of illegal infiltration from Bangladesh. But while the saffron party saw a nine-fold jump in a number of its Lok Sabha seats in 2019 winning 18 from the mere two in 2014, it lost in all the three assembly seats in the recently concluded by-polls. It is believed that the Trinamool Congress campaign around the exclusion of Hindu Bengalis from the NRC list was also one of the reasons. In a number of states including Karnataka, the BJP is raising the tempo on the NRC issue.

In the Rajya Sabha, Shah, replying to a question about West Bengal Chief Minister repeatedly being saying that NRC and CAB wll not be allowed in her state, asserted that Citizenship Bill will be "implemented in all states including West Bengal".