Two days after CAA came into force through an official notification, Shah picked up Congress-ruled Madhya Pradesh to mobilise the people for CAA.
Many non-BJP ruled states, including Madhya Pradesh, have announced that they will not implement CAA in their states. Shah challenged Chief Minister Kamal Nath to establish that the CAA was going to take away the citizenship of any bona fide Indian. "I challenge Mamata Banerjee and Rahul Baba, to find out a provision from CAA that can take citizenship away from anyone in this country," said Shah.
He said Hindus, Christian, Sikhs, and Buddhists from Pakistan and other South Asian countries have the same rights in this country and pledged that CAA will give citizenship to them.
The Home Minister addressed a large rally at Garrison ground as part of BJP's outreach to create awareness on CAA. The BJP launched a 10-day door-to-door campaign a week ago to address the people. Senior party leaders, including former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and state unit president Rakesh Singh were also present.
While BJP is drumming up support for the CAA, opposition is brewing within the organization. On Sunday the party expelled Javed Baig, media in-charge of the Minority Front, for reportedly hobnobbing with the groups opposing the CAA and NRC.
BJP office-bearer Satyendra Bhushan Singh wrote to Baig saying his activities in the recent past have come to the party's notice. "Opposing CAA amounts to involvement in anti-party activities. This act of yours has tarnished the image of the party. State President Rakesh Singh has expelled you from the primary membership of the party," the letter said.
CAA protests continue in Bhopal with hundreds of students and local people joining them every day.
Asked about the developments, Javed Baig said, many among the minority community are poor, with lack of education and belong to labour class that has to work on daily wages for survival. Most of them do not have documents or resources to get them made. In olden days deliveries were performed by midwives at home and documentation was considered important.
Baig said hospitals did not have culture to conduct many deliveries or maintain documents. Due to this, documents were not made there either. "Where will all these people go and get the documents? There is already an 11-year-old law in India. When we can give citizenship to people like Adnan Sami through that law, we can also give the rest to other people. Then where is the need to bring CAA? We already have shown some people as refugees.
"I never wrote anything against the party or went outside the party line and said anything, yet the party has acted against me," he said.
Before Baig's removal several leaders of BJP Minority Morcha in Khargone and Guna started resigning last week. In Khargone, minority officials from across the district reached the BJP office collectively to resign. Party sources said 176 minority activists have resigned so far. The District President of Minority Front in Guna has also resigned.
( With inputs from IANS )