Bengal: Shah Sharpens BJP’s Poll Pitch With UCC, ‘Son Of Soil’ CM, ‘Ram Rajya’

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday turned the BJP’s manifesto launch into a hard-edged ideological _ pitch, promising Uniform Civil Code in West Bengal within six months, a “son of Bengal” as chief minister and “Ram Rajya” in the state.

- Press Trust Of India

Launching the ‘Sankalp Patra’, he sought to blend the party's stance against infiltration and appeasement with a welfare push and an attempt to blunt the TMC's attack that the BJP would interfere with Bengali food habits.

“There will be one law for every person in Bengal,” Shah said at a press conference after unveiling the manifesto.

Defending the UCC promise amid repeated attacks by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee that such a code amounted to appeasement politics, the former BJP chief said the idea did not originate with his party.

“The recommendation for a Uniform Civil Code is not of the BJP. It is of the Constituent Assembly. It was due to appeasement politics that the UCC was not implemented for so long. In whichever states we have formed governments, we have implemented them; and we will do it in Bengal too.” Shah asked whether the UCC amounted to majoritarianism.

“The Constitution is based on the principle that every citizen, regardless of religion, should be treated equally. Is having the same law for every citizen appeasement? Or is it appeasement when one citizen is allowed four marriages and another only one? The UCC ends appeasement,” he said.

Shah also addressed a question that has long dogged the BJP in Bengal — who would be its chief ministerial face.