"Mark Out, Disenfranchise, Annihilate": Trinamool's Mahua Moitra Shreds CAA

Trinamool Congress's Mahua Moitra delivered another scorching speech in parliament on Monday, denouncing the BJP over what she called its "betrayal of the citizens" who believed in the party's slogan of "Sabka saath sabka vikas (development for all)" and voted for it. "You betrayed them by questioning the citizenship of the very citizens who voted you to power," the MP said.

Citing the Holocaust of the Nazi regime in Hitler's Germany, she said the government's new citizenship law and the citizenship lists -- the NRC, CAA and NPR - "are all tools in this Machiavellian design to first mark out, then disenfranchise and finally annihilate".

But this plan, she said, did not have the approval of the "middle of the road voters" who believed in the "Sabka Saath" slogan promise and interpreted as "development for a united India.

These voters, she said, "cannot identify with the hate filled venomous invective that's spewed out by members of the ruling party".

The BJP is building a "narrative where our dadis become your terrorists and our children become your desh drohis (traitors)", said the lawmaker, who remained on the online trending lists for nearly two days last year with her searing speech on "Seven signs of Fascism".

The reference was to the women protesters, the dadis of Shaheen Bagh, who made headlines across the world with their round-the-clock protest for more than 50 days.

In their recent speeches, Union Minister Anurag Thakur and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had tagged those protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) as "traitors" and "terrorists" and suggested that they be shot.

Anurag Thakur was caught on camera egging on a crowd to chant a slogan that calls for gunning down "traitors". Accusing Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of "supplying biryani to those protesting in Shaheen Bagh and elsewhere in the city," Yogi Adityanath said since Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, "We have been identifying every terrorist and feeding them goli (bullets) instead of biryani".

BJP MP Parvesh Verma had even said that the protesters would "enter your houses, rape your sisters and daughters, kill them".

The BJP, Ms Moitra said, should remember that its "historic mandate" comprised only 37 per cent of the 67 per cent votes cast out of a pool of 900 million voters.

"That's about 230 million people -- 23 crore out of 1.2 billion citizens," added the former investment banker.