Bengal BJP to send one crore signatures to PM for CAB

The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has chalked out a plan to send a mass petition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi carrying over one crore signatures to demand passing of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) in the winter session of Parliament, according to a top party leader here on Monday.

"We will send a petition carrying one crore signatures to the Prime Minister demanding passage of the CAB in the winter session itself," Bengal BJP General Secretary Sayantan Bose told . It would be sent by the end of November, he added.

Highlighting the CAB has become vital for the BJP to assure its Hindu voters in view of the suspicion and panic in West Bengal about any future National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC), headed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has been campaigning big against the NRC list in Assam, which excluded 19 lakh people, 12 lakh of them being Hindus.

The CAB provides for granting citizenship to minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan after an aggregate period of residence or service for "not less than six years".

To counter the TMC campaign, Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said the NRC would be preceded by the CAB.

Basu said the signature campaign would start in full steam now as the festive season had concluded. "We were waiting for the Kali puja celebrations to end. All our mass organisations will participate in the campaign," he said.

Each mass organisation had set target of its own for collecting signatures, he said and added, the Mahila Morcha aimed to get 25 lakh signatories.

The CAB, introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 15, 2016, was passed on January 8. But it lapsed as could not be tabled in the Rajya Sabha. The Modi government has decided to revive the CAB.

The BJP had made the NRC a major issue in Bengal in the Lok Sabha poll campaign earlier this year.

( With inputs from IANS )