Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday reiterated his stand on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), saying that its implementation will make the country unsafe.

“The implementation of CAA will make the country unsafe, create a law-and-order situation,” Kejriwal said. “Spending taxpayers’ money on minorities from other countries is not acceptable.”

The Delhi chief minister’s remarks come hours after the Union home minister Amit Shah responded to his criticism regarding the CAA, alleging that Kejriwal’s outburst regarding CAA stemmed from his party’s alleged exposure in corruption cases.

Criticising Kejriwal for his remarks that CAA will take away jobs meant for India’s youth, and can lead to an increase in crime, Shah said that people who will benefit from the law are already in India.

“He (Kejriwal) is unaware that all these people have already taken refuge in our country. They are living in India. Those who arrived in our country by 2014 will get citizenship.”

“And if he is concerned, why does he not talk about Bangladeshi infiltrators? Why does he not protest against Rohingyas? It is because they are doing vote-bank politics. He will face a very tough time during elections in Delhi which is why he is doing vote-bank politics. Are Rohingyas and Bangladeshi infiltrators not taking our jobs? He is just raising his voice against minorities of Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis,” the home minister told ANI in an interview.

In response, Kejriwal alleged that home minister Amit Shah failed to answer his questions regarding CAA.

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“Home Minister did not answer any questions raised by me but he said Kejriwal is corrupt,” Kejriwal said. “I am not important. I ask him – when we are not capable of giving employment to our own people, then how will we give employment and housing to refugees from Pakistan? The migration that will happen due to CAA will be bigger than what happened during the partition.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Kejriwal had said that the implementation of the CAA ahead of the Lok Sabha elections was a “dirty vote bank politics” of the Bharatiya Janata Party and asserted that people want this law to be repealed.

The Centre on Monday implemented CAA, a contentious law that paves the way for citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who entered India before December 31, 2014. The development came four years after Parliament passed the law in December 2019.