West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suvendu Adhikari said on Tuesday, 2 August, that Home Minister Amit Shah had assured him that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act will be implemented after the completion of the vaccination drive for COVID-19.
The controversial act, which had been met with protests in Delhi's Shaheen Bagh and other cities across the country in late 2019 and 2020, aims to give citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, Buddhists, and Parsis from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Shah had held a meeting with Adhikari in Parliament House on Tuesday to discuss the CAA and other issues.
Following the meeting, Adhikari said that Shah plans to implement the CAA after the population is inoculated with the third vaccine dose against COVID-19, news agency PTI reported.
Adhikari Urges Shah to Launch Probe Against 100 TMC Leaders
During the meeting, Adhikari also brought up matters related to the party's functioning in West Bengal. He gave the home minister a list of 100 leaders of the Trinamool Congress (TMC), and urged him to launch corruption probes against all of them.
He also handed over letterheads of some TMC leaders, and alleged that they were used to recommend certain names for jobs in exchange for bribes, PTI reported.
After the meeting, Adhikari had taken to Twitter to say, "It's an honour for me to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah for 45 minutes at his office in Parliament. I briefed him on how WB Govt is completely mired in corrupt activities such as the teachers recruitment scam. Also requested him to implement CAA at the earliest."
The CAA was passed by Parliament in December 2019. The Centre has not yet framed the rules of the Act.
While addressing a rally in West Bengal in May 2022, Shah had said that the law will be put into force once the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end.
(With inputs from PTI.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)