Illegal migrants are SP, BSP votebank, says BJP president
Hitting out at the opposition, Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) president Amit Shah on Friday termed illegal migrants a vote bank of the Samajwadi Party ( SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party ( BSP). Mr Shah also targeted the opposition over the issues of triple talaq and the Ayodhya dispute.
“Shouldn’t the intruders be thrown out of the country?” Mr Shah said, in an apparent reference to migrants from Bangladesh. The BJP chief was addressing booth- level party workers
in Uttar Pradesh ( UP). He said the recent exercise on the National Register of Citizens ( NRC) in Assam had identified 40 lakh such people, ‘ and the process of throwing them out has started’.
“If UP elects the Narendra Modi government again in 2019, every single intruder will be ousted from Kashmir to Kanyakumari,” he said. “These intruders may be a vote bank for ‘ bua’ and ‘ bhatija’,” Mr Shah said, referring to alliance partners BSP chief Mayawati and SP president Akhilesh Yadav. “For us, it is national security that is most important,” he said.
Mr Shah said the party remained committed to the construction of the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya, and challenged the opposition parties to spell out their its own stands on the issue. He alleged that the Congress wanted the Ayodhya land case taken up only after the elections.