An alleged Bangladeshi immigrant arrested earlier this month in Mumbai has turned out to be a local BJP leader. The Congress lost no time in deriding the party that rules at the centre. "Has Amit Shah (Union Home Minister) made special provisions for BJP members in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)?" Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant tweeted on Saturday.
According to the police, a man named Rubel Sheikh was arrested earlier this month for living in India on the basis of forged documents. He is allegedly a Bangladeshi national.
On Saturday, a photo of the man with BJP MP Gopal Shetty, identifying him as the party's north Mumbai minority cell chief, surfaced on social media.
The Congress, seizing the opportunity, launched a scathing attack on the BJP, which has promised to rid the country of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
"The chief of the north Mumbai BJP minority cell has turned out to be Bangladeshi. We want to ask the BJP, is this Sangh Jihad? Are there special provisions under the CAA for BJP? One law for the country, another for the BJP," Mr Sawant tweeted.
Mr Shetty downplayed the controversy. "Rubel Sheikh was inducted in our minority cell, and he got a photo clicked with me. A lot of people do that. But I believe if somebody has done anything wrong, then action should be taken against that person. I myself give information to the police about such people," he said.
The MP added that there should be action against people from Bangladesh living illegally in India. "The Congress should make its stand clear on it," he said.
The CAA paves the way for non-Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan to get Indian citizenship if they came in before 2015. The opposition says the law makes religion a criterion of citizenship for the first time in a blow to the secular constitution and poses a threat to Indian minorities when combined with the proposed National Register of Citizens or NRC. The passage of the law had triggered nationwide protests in 2019. The government is yet to notify its rules.
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