Azamgarh: CAA here to stay says Narendra Modi

Azamgarh/ Bhadohi (UP) : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday accused the opposition of spreading lies and inciting violence over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, and said that the law is here to stay. Addressing a election rally in Azamgarh a day after the first set of citizenship certificates under the new law were issued, he dared the opposition parties to muster whatever forces they could against the CAA.

They will never be able to scrap the law, he asserted, saying in Hindi, “Kya iss desh me ab tak koi mai ka lal paida hua hai jo CAA ko khatam kar sake? These people are Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. They have been living in the country for a long time as refugees and were victims of the partition of the country done on the basis of religion.”

Modi addressed three more back-to-back election rallies in quick succession in Bhadohi, Jaunpur and Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, targeting the Congress and the Samajwadi Party. In Bhadohi, where the two parties are backing a Trinamool Congress candidate as INDIA bloc partners, the prime minister accused them to trying out West Bengal’s “TMC politics” in Uttar Pradesh. The brand, he claimed, represented politics of appeasement and harassment of Dalits and women.

In Pratapgarh, he said the opposition INDIA bloc wants to appoint five prime ministers in five years and predicted that the alliance will disintegrate after June 4, when the Lok Sabha election results are out. “Khata khat khata khat,” he said in Hindi, suggesting that it will happen rapidly -- and also mocking Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for using the phrase to claim that a fixed stipend would flow into the accounts of poor women if his party comes to power.

Modi accused the Congress and its allies of neglecting the refugees over the years because they were not part of their own “vote bank”. “The Congress and the SP tried to spread lies in the name of CAA. They tried to push Uttar Pradesh and the entire country towards riots,” he claimed. “You are frauds... you forced the country to burn in the fire of communalism,” he said, claiming he had “exposed” the opposition.

He said voters in Kashmir felt proud to participate in the festival of democracy.“The excitement shown by people of Srinagar in polls is proof that no one can bring back Article 370 and do vote bank politics.” “Earlier during polls in Kashmir, there used to be protests, people used to fear for their lives and get threats from terrorists. But this time previous polling records were broken in Srinagar,” the PM said.