BJP’s calculation is that illegal migrants is an issue that’s still burning, and a
promise it hopes will entice voters to bring them back to power.
New Delhi: The BJP seems to have found a new carrot to dangle in front of its key constituency ahead of elections — if you vote us back to power, we will expel ‘infiltrators’. In other words, the NRC or the National Register of Citizens.
BJP president Amit Shah has raised NRC at election campaigns in states that have nothing to do with the process. But now the BJP has changed tack.
From talking about how it is implementing the updation of NRC — an exercise aimed at identifying those who migrated illegally to Assam from Bangladesh after 1971 — it is now promising to fulfill the mandate if voted back in 2019.
Also read: Not satisfied with just Assam, BJP now intensifies demand for NRC in West Bengal
This was in evidence at a meeting in Madhya Pradesh’s Hoshangabad, where, addressing booth level party workers, Shah promised to expel ‘infiltrators’ if voted to power again.
“I have come here to make a promise to the people of Madhya Pradesh. If you bring the BJP back to power in the 2018 state and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP government will identify and expel each infiltrator from the country,” said Shah at the meeting which was held over the weekend.
‘Vote us back’
The party’s calculation, said sources, is that while an issue is still burning, it helps to ask to be voted back to fulfill the promise.
“This is effective electoral rhetoric for the BJP, which will appeal to our key votebank. The promise to implement it fully and evict infiltrators will be a crucial part of our election campaign in the run-up to 2019,” said a highly placed source in the party, who did not wish to be named.
“A promise to be fulfilled helps give the voters, especially our core electorate, a reason to vote us back to power,” said the source.
Another party leader, also on condition of anonymity, said, “It is now clear the final NRC list is unlikely to come out before 2019. There is a long-drawn process left.
“Hence, this works well as an election promise that will be met once voted back. Besides, the opposition to it by rival parties also helps BJP show how it is the only party that will take action on this,” added the leader.
National appeal
This strategy is in line with how the BJP has tried to reap the benefits of its promise of constructing the Ram temple in Ayodhya before each election, even though no progress has taken place as the matter is sub judice.
The NRC, a Supreme Court-monitored exercise, is a complex process with delicate socio-political undertones. The government or the courts are yet to discuss what would be done with those eventually left out of the final list, given deportation has serious diplomatic and humanitarian ramifications.
So far, a final draft has been released which left out around 40 lakh applicants. A long process of claims and objections has to follow, before a final list can be drafted.
Much like the Ram temple, the NRC is also geographically limited, but has a much larger national appeal among BJP’s core voters.
Speaking in Rajasthan last month, Shah said his party’s government would strike off the “termites” from the voters’ list, in an apparent reference to illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
At the end of its two-day national executive meet in September, the BJP said, “The PM (Narendra) Modi-led Indian government will not allow India to be used as a safe haven by illegal infiltrators.”
The party added that “each infiltrator will be identified, stripped of citizenship and deported”, referring to the current Modi government’s mandate.
Contentious exercise
The BJP has now stepped up its demand for the contentious exercise to even be conducted in West Bengal, claiming they might go to court to demand it.
The party talks of NRC in the same breath as the Citizenship Amendment Bill, according to which illegal migrants who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan will be eligible for citizenship in India.
Also read: For BJP, NRC has become the national register of convenience
Effectively, the BJP is catering to its core Hindutva votebank with the thrust on deportation of illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, and citizenship for Hindus.
While the BJP government introduced the bill in Lok Sabha on 19 July 2016, it has since remained stuck due to severe political opposition to it.
“Besides NRC, the fact that the Citizenship Bill is pending gives us another appealing election promise to make,” added the first source.