West Bengal to pass anti-CAA resolution on Jan 27; third state after Kerala & Punjab to do so

The West Bengal state Assembly will pass a resolution against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on January 27. A special session of the Assembly has been called for discussing and passing the resolution on that day. Senior Trinamool Congress leader and state education minister Partha Chatterjee has invited other opposition parties to support the resolution which will start at 2 pm.

Significantly, this comes on a day Union Home Minister Amit Shah has reiterated that there will be no backtracking on the CAA, and challenged Mamata Banerjee among other Opposition leaders to debate it with him.

The Trinamool Congress’ announcement comes after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had on Monday said that the anti-CAA resolution will be passed in the state Assembly within a few days. Bengal is thus going to become only the third state after Kerala and Punjab in moving a resolution against the contentious Act which has led to large scale protests across the country. Kerala and Punjab have in fact have also moved Supreme Court challenging various aspects of the law which are being deemed as “unconstitutional” by ordinary citizens and many Opposition political parties.

However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders at the Centre have said that after a law is passed, states can not choose to not implement it. They can only ask or appeal the Centre to rethink its stand, the BJP leaders have maintained.

On Monday, Banerjee urged the states from the Northeast to move a resolution against the CAA and urged them not to participate in National Population Register (NPR) exercise which she claimed is closely linked to the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

Banerjee had also claimed that the NPR was an instrument of the Centre to “fool people” and accused it to be a trap and asked people to be cautious. The state Assembly had earlier passed a resolution against NRC on September 6, 2019. Banerjee is scheduled to conduct a series of anti-CAA-NRC rallies in the hills from Wednesday.