West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said all Bangladeshi immigrants who have been casting their votes in India are Indians and that they will not have to prove their citizenship, PTI reported.
“Those who have come from Bangladesh are citizens of India...they have got citizenship,” she said at a public meeting in Kolkata. “You don’t need to apply for citizenship again. You have been casting your votes in elections, electing the prime minister and chief ministers. Now they are saying that you are not citizens, don’t believe them.”
Banerjee added that she will not let “even a single person” be driven out of the state. “No refugee living in the state will be deprived of citizenship,” she said.
Attacking the Centre over the violence in Delhi that has claimed 47 lives as of Tuesday, Banerjee said she would never let what happened in the national Capital be repeated in her state. “Don’t forget this is [West] Bengal,” she said. “We do not want Bengal to turn into another Delhi or another Uttar Pradesh.”
On Monday, Banerjee had used the word “genocide” to describe last week’s communal violence in Delhi. She reminded Union Home Minister Amit Shah that it was because of the Citizenship Amendment Act that so many citizens had been killed.
She had also taken credit for the arrests of three Bharatiya Janata Party workers who reportedly chanted an incendiary slogan in Kolkata on Sunday. “I condemn those who raised ‘goli maaro’ slogan on Kolkata streets,” Banerjee said. “Law will take its own course... This is not Delhi, will not tolerate slogans like ‘goli maaro’ in Kolkata.”
Protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act are continuing across the country, more than a month after it was passed in Parliament. The amendments, notified on January 10, provide citizenship to refugees from six minority religious communities from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, provided they have lived in India for six years and entered the country by December 31, 2014. The Act has been widely criticised for excluding Muslims.
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