Delhi Chief Minister and National Convenor of Aam Admi Party, Arvind Kejriwal has claimed that by implementing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, (CAA) the Bhartiya Janata Party has betrayed the people of Assam and the entire North East states “who have been victims of migration from Bangladesh and whose language and culture are in danger today.”

In a post on X, Kejriwal stated that the people of the region and the “entire country” oppose CAA.

On Monday, the Government of India announced the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules, 2024, four years after the Act was passed in the Parliament. CAA enables persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who arrived in India by 2014 to attain Indian citizenship. The eligible minorities are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis or Christians and excludes Muslims.

Kejriwal questioned the Government’s intention of putting the Act into effect just before the Lok Sabha elections and accused the BJP of doing so to create a vote bank. He slammed the Central Government for introducing CAA instead of solving the issues of citizens of India who are “groaning due to inflation and unemployed youth” or trying to bring back the 11 lakh businessmen and industrialists who have left the country in the last ten years.

“Every country in the whole world stops the poor from other countries from coming to their country because it reduces the employment of the local people. BJP is probably the only party in the world which is doing this dirty politics to make the poor of neighboring countries its vote bank”, the Delhi CM said.