A day after the opposition pushed the ruling party to the corner over National Register of Citizens (NRC), the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday accused both Congress and the Trinamool Congress of “murdering democracy” by not letting its president Amit Shah speak in Parliament.
Union minister Prakash Javadekar has asked the Congress and its former president Sonia Gandhi to make their stand clear on the issue of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the country.
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Addressing a press conference, Javadekar said that the Trinamool was nervous due to growing strength of the BJP in West Bengal. Javadekar hit out at the opposition after its members began protesting when Shah rose to speak in the Rajya Sabha, forcing its adjournment for the day.
“They deliberately raised objections and issues to prevent Shah from completing his speech. It is murder of democracy to prevent a member of the House from speaking,” Javadekar said in New Delhi.
Javadekar said that the Assam Accord to identify illegal immigrants was inked by then prime minister and Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi, “Shah only asserted that the BJP was implementing the NRC, which was the soul of the accord.”
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“Even Indira Gandhi had said that the Bangladeshis should return to their country after the situation there normalised following the Indo-Pak war in 1971. We now want to ask about the stand of Sonia Gandhi on the NRC and on evicting infiltrators from the country,” the minister said.
Javadekar also condemned TMC supremo Mamta Banerjee’s reported statement that exclusion of over 40 lakh people from the NRC in Assam would lead to “civil war”.
The saffron leader and union minister Javadekar informed that Shah would participate in a rally Kolkata on August 11, and said that the local police had not done any favour to the BJP by granting permission to it.