VAISHALI ) Bihar ):  Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday stated that the Citizenship Amendment Act brought in by the National Democratic Alliance government was meant to provide citizenship and not take it away.
Speaking at a pro-CAA rally in election-bound Bihar, Shah said that the opposition is misleading the minority communities in India and engineering violence in the country over the CAA. He said that CAA intends to help those people whose “women were raped in front of their eyes”, referring to the Partition period. “CAA intends to help those who came to India after their womenfolk were raped in front of their eyes, their properties snatched away and their places of worship desecrated,” Shah said in Bihar.
He appealed to Muslims to read the Act before reacting. “I’ve come here to tell the Muslim brothers to read the Citizenship Amendment Act. I have also come to tell Rahul Gandhi and Lalu Prasad Yadav to not mislead people on CAA. Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal are also misleading people. I want to say that it is a law to give citizenship, no one take away citizenship.”
Shah also asked the gathering whether Pakistani terrorists who attack Indian security forces must not be taught a lesson. “Should we not teach a lesson to Pakistani terrorists who entered our country and beheaded our soldiers? PM Modi entered the houses of these terrorists by carrying our surgical strikes.”
Amit Shah on Thursday stated that the Citizenship Amendment Act brought in by the National Democratic Alliance government was meant to provide citizenship and not take it away.  “CAA intends to help those who came to India after their womenfolk were raped in front of their eyes, their properties snatched away and their places of worship desecrated,” Shah said.
Shah also asked the gathering whether Pakistani terrorists who attack Indian security forces must not be taught a lesson. “Should we not teach a lesson to Pakistani terrorists who entered our country and beheaded our soldiers? PM Modi entered the houses of these terrorists by carrying our surgical strikes.”
“I want to end all rumours by declaring this here in the open — the next assembly election in Bihar will be fought under the leadership of Nitish Kumar,” Amit Shah said at a rally in Vaishali.

This is not the first time Mr Shah, the BJP chief, put out such a clarification. The reiteration, that too in Bihar, is meant to send out a strong signal to a section within the BJP and the NDA that has been targeting Nitish Kumar.
Ties between the BJP and JDU have been patchy of late.The allies sparred recently when severe floods hit Bihar last year, leaving 200 people dead and property worth crores destroyed.The Bihar government asked for Rs 4,000 crore for flood relief but was allocated only Rs 400 crore last week. Reports say Nitish Kumar’s stand on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register for Citizens (NRC) has also worried the BJP.

For the first time in the month since the new religion-based citizenship law was enforced, the Chief Minister acknowledged the protests against the law and said he was ready for a debate on it in the Bihar assembly. He also categorically ruled out carrying out the NRC in Bihar, saying there was “no question”. Till then, only non-BJP states had said no to NRC.
Amit Shah had also said he would clear his stand on the National Population Register later as there were some issues with the questionnaire prepared for the exercise linked to census.

Mr Shah accused the opposition parties of engineering the anti-CAA protests. “This is the reason why the BJP took upon itself to hold rallies across the country… to apprise people about their nefarious designs,” he said.The Home Minister also took a swipe at RJD chief Lalu Yadav, commenting that he was “dreaming” of becoming chief minister even in jail.
Nine months is a long time in politics. But if indeed the BJP and JD(U) fight the polls together, they have the clear edge. While Lok Sabha outcomes cannot be extrapolated to make predictions about assembly polls, as recent state elections have shown, the fact that the NDA (which also includes Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janashakti Party) won 39 of the 40 seats in the state means it starts with a psychological advantage. Caste equations also favour the NDA — as a large segment of upper castes, extremely backward classes, and Dalits, particularly Paswans, appear to be supportive of the alliance.

The challenge for the alliance, however, is its governance record. Mr Kumar, who delivered on law and order, infrastructure and education for girls in his first two terms, is widely seen as having presided over an ineffective government in the third term.

Prohibition may add a section of women votes, but has spawned a parallel economy enmeshed in criminal networks. The next generation of reforms has not happened. But the NDA’s biggest advantage is the weakness of the opposition.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has struggled in the absence of Lalu Prasad, and his son, Tejaswi Yadav, has not been able to establish a connect on the ground. The Congress remains marginal. But both parties hope that a combination of economic discontent against the Centre and local resentment against Mr Kumar will tilt the balance over the year.
(Bureau Reports with Agency Inputs ).