Kolkata, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has convened a meeting of senior party leaders on December 20 to draw up the party’s strategy in view of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB) getting the nod from both Houses in the Parliament.
The meeting comes on the back of Union Home Minister Amit Shah categorically declaring on the floor of the Rajya Sabhs on Wednesday that the legislation would be implemented across the country, including Bengal.
Banerjee has time and again declared that she won’t allow the National Register of Citizens (NRC) as well as the CAB to be implemented in West Bengal.
The meeting, to be held in the state party headquarters, would be attended by all party MPs, MLAs and district presidents, party sources said.
The party’s strategy to combat the CAB as also a possible NRC exercise later would be deliberated upon at the meeting.
After Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha too cleared the CAB on Thursday. The Trinamool MPs had voted against the legislation in both the Houses.
Banerjee has time and again described NRC and CAB as ‘two sides of the same coin’ and promised to the people that nobody in the state would lose his or her citizenship.
The BJP, which has become bullish after the CAB sailed through the Parliament, is likely to make it a big issue in the state in next year’s civic polls as also in the Assembly elections in 2021.
The issue is all the more important for the BJP after the drubbing it suffered in the recent Assembly bypolls where fears of a possible NRC exercise and consequent loss of citizenship swung large number of votes to the Trinamool.
As CAB seeks to provide Indian citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, the Trinamool wants to be battle ready to thwart the BJP’s bid to woo scores of Hindu refugees who came over to the state from Bangladesh over the past few decades.
