Bengal BJP leaders Mukul Roy and Kailash Vijayvargiya have rushed to Shantanu Thakur’s residence at Thakurnagar after Union Home Minister Amit Shah postponed his visit.
Shah was scheduled to address important rallies across the state, including the much-talked-about one at Matua bastion Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas district about the implementation of CAA.
But he cancelled his tour amid the intensified protests of famers against three farm laws amid incidents of clashes with “locals” at some places and also after a low-scale blast happened neat tje Israeli embassy in New Delhi.
According to ABP Ananda, Roy and Vijayvargiya are visiting Thakurnagar to hold a closed-door meeting with local BJP MP Shantanu Thakur, who is also the joint president of All India Matua Mahasang.
Majority of Matua populace, a Dalit community in Bengal, are believed to have migrated from Bangladesh since partition and have been facing sustained issues with their citizenship. As a result, the controversial CAA was welcomed with much joy by them.
Matua voters, who are believed to be 3 crores in number in a state of around 10 crore population, were considered close to Mamata Banerjee’s TMC.
However, the affiliation suffered a blow after BJP made a massive inroads into the Matua community during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It worsened further after Mamata Banerjee emerged as one of the strongest opposing force of the CAA.
But due to the delay in implementation of the law, despite being passed by the Parliament in 2919, a large section Matuas have allegedly grwon restless.
The heat has been majorly borne by Shantanu, who in turn has put pressure on his party’s leadership to start rolling the CAA before the upcoming West Bengal Assembly Election.
Shah’s rally on Saturday was thus looked at as a potential ice-breaker. But with him not coming, what the Bengal BJP camp decides remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, the ruling TMC, which has taken a firm stance of not implementing CAA and NRC, said on Friday that Shah did not have anything new to say to the Matuas.
TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee has maintained that the Matuas in West Bengal were identified as Indian citizens and there was no question of new citizenship. She had further asserte that the BJP was manipulating the emotions of Matuas.