PTI, KOLKATA/NEW DELHI: Upping the ante, BJP president Amit Shah will hold a rally in Kolkata on August 11 amid clear indications from his party leaders that they will make the alleged presence of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in West Bengal a poll issue and seek an Assam-like NRC there.
With Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee holding talks in the national capital with opposition leaders to take on the BJP over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, Shah’s proposed rally underscores his intention to build the issue as a major poll plank in her state as Lok Sabha elections are barely eight months away.
A combative Shah earlier told reporters that he would definitely go to Kolkata on August 11 and dared the state government to arrest him after his party leaders claimed that the local police had yet not given permission to his event.
However, Kolkata police later said it had granted the permission, setting the stage for a showdown between the Trinamool Congress, the dominant political force in the state, and the BJP, which has emerged in recent polls as the main challenger to it but remains a distant second.
BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya told reporters that there could be over one crore illegal immigrants in West Bengal and suggest that NRC should be adopted in border states to identify them.
State BJP president Dilip Ghosh had earlier said that NRC will be published, on the lines of the one in Assam, if the saffron party was voted to power in the state.
