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Saamana attacks BJP
Amid rising violence in parts of north-east India over the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Parliament, the Shiv Sena, through an editorial in party
Amid rising violence in parts of north-east India over the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Parliament, the Shiv Sena, through an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana on Friday, attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for its effort to show it is “the sole saviour of Hindus”. The former ally of the BJP slammed Union home minister Amit Shah over his remarks on the Sena’s change of stance on the bill.
The Sena supported CAB in the Lok Sabha, but stayed away from the voting in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led party made a U-turn on its support to the bill as the pro-Hindutva party is in an alliance with secular parties – Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) – in Maharashtra.
During a debate in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Shah had remarked that there was no clarity on why the Sena changed its stance on the bill “overnight”. In response, the Sena said, “We want to ask them, how is truth forgotten after a ‘closed door meeting’ and how is a word that is given [on rotational chief ministership] conveniently forgotten? Rather than thinking about what happened overnight, they should focus on the north-east.”
The Sena also took on the BJP-led Centre and asked if abrogating Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir led to the “ghar wapsi” of Kashmiri pandits.
“The bill was brought with a purpose to show that they are the sole saviour of the Hindus around the world, but even after repealing Article 370, the ‘ghar wapsi’ of Kashmiri Pandits hasn’t happened. The government does not have concrete answers on this. The situation in Kashmir is still not normal,” the editorial said.
The Sena, which had sought a 25-year ban on voting rights for those securing citizenship through the law, and asked, “What kind of vote bank politics is the government playing by inviting the uncalled for pain?”
