Will put all ‘anti-nationals’ behind bars, warns Shah

NEW DELHI: Barely 24 hours after he dubbed illegal infiltrators “termites” at a rally in Rajasthan, BJP chief Amit Shah repeated the analogy in Delhi on Sunday, and said action against them should not worry any patriot.Addressing the ‘Purvanchal Mahakumbh’ rally of Delhi BJP at Ramlila Maidan, Shah said his party would identify ‘illegal infiltrators’ living in the national capital as well as the entire country if it came back to office after the 2019 polls. He alleged that such ‘infiltrators’ were undermining the country’s future.“These infiltrators are responsible for threatening national security and causing bomb blasts which have led to deaths of innocent citizens. Should their human rights be protected?” he asked. Shah challenged Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to clear his stand on the matter. He also accused Kejriwal and Congress president Rahul Gandhi of sheltering infiltrators due to ‘vote bank’ politics.Shah’s use of the ‘termite’ analogy to advertise his intent to push out alleged infiltrators is being seen as a pointer to BJP’s plan to step up its attack on illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.BJP has been accused of singling out Muslims among the alleged immigrants. However, it remains defiant and has said that Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, who have to take shelter in India, are victims of religious persecution and, therefore, entitled to protection as ‘refugees’.The BJP chief alleged that 'infiltrators' were taking over jobs from unemployed poorvanchali youth and food from the country’s poor. “The foodgrain that these people eat is from the share that is meant for my nation’s poor people. Rahul baba and Arvind Kejriwal are worried about them because they are their vote bank politics. After winning the 2019 elections, we will identify every single infiltrator in the country. Congress and AAP should clear their stand on the matter,” he said.“AAP’s parliamentarians have expressed sympathy about these infiltrators in Parliament. Are they with infiltrators or not? They should clearly tell Delhi and the nation before the elections,” he added.Shah went on to speak about the increased budgetary allocation to poorvanchal states and a number of infrastructure projects launched in the region. However, he devoted a significant part of his speech to ‘infiltrators’. “Several crore infiltrators are living in our country and like termites, they are slowly ruining the future of our nation. Should they be uprooted or not?” Shah asked the mostly poorvanchali crowd.Pitching the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam as an achievement of the NDA government, he said, “After probing these cases (those left out of the list), their names will be removed from the electoral rolls.” He added that “no patriot should feel troubled when these names are removed”.“When the matter of NRC came to Rajya Sabha, all the opposition parties got unsettled,” he said, adding that they were worried about the human rights of 'infiltrators.'Shah also referred to “urban Maoists attempting to kill the PM and making human bombs”. “Should these people not be put behind bars? Congress and AAP call it freedom of speech. The BJP government will throw everyone engaged in anti-national activities behind bars,” he said. He dismissed the attempts to cobble a ‘mahagathbandhan’ as a “principle Speaking about Delhi, Shah said the Union government had given in-principle guarantee to regularise 1,600 unauthorised colonies in the capital. He claimed the Centre had allocated Rs 50,000 crore to the AAP government but the latter had failed to deliver on its promises. “Delhi region has got derailed from the path of development and is on the path of protests and non-cooperation,” he said.Lauding poorvanchalis, Shah said they had made the biggest contribution to the “vikas Ganga” under this government with their sweat and toil. He said historically, injustice was done to poorvanchal states which had been rectified by the current dispensation.