The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday responded to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s criticism of the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the CAA does not deprive any Indian of their citizenship, but gives citizenship to those who are persecuted based on their faith.

“Today, Kejriwal’s peculiar statement came that outsiders will take away jobs due to the CAA. What kind of logic is this?” Prasad said. “The people who will come to India are those who have been persecuted in the name of their faith… Is it not India’s moral duty and constitutional and cultural right to provide them with legal means of citizenship protection? I want to assure you that no one’s job will be taken away, and no one’s citizenship will be taken away.”

“I want to tell those trying to spread communal tension in the name of CAA, to stop. Stop telling lies. I urge the parties of south India, particularly from Kerala and Tamil Nadu, to stop spreading hatred,” he added.

The Centre on Monday notified rules for the implementation of the CAA, four years after the Parliament passed the contentious law in 2019 to fast-track citizenship for undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who came to India before December 31, 2014.

Earlier today, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal slammed the BJP-led central government over the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), calling it a “dirty vote bank politics” aimed at taking away jobs meant for India’s youth.

“It is a dirty vote bank politics. If those people are brought to India and selectively settled in constituencies where the BJP is politically weak, the vote bank of the BJP will increase. Some people say that in the future elections, the vote bank will give BJP a big political advantage,” Kejriwal said.

He alleged that the BJP-led central government is not able to provide jobs to youth, but is promising the same for people coming from Pakistan.

“Under CAA, minority communities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan will be given Indian citizenship, which means that they will be brought to our country in large numbers, given jobs and houses. The BJP-led central government is not able to provide jobs to our youth, but to people from Pakistan. A large number of people in India are homeless and jobless, but the BJP wants to give our jobs to them, spend the money, which should have been used on the people of India, on their settlement,” the Delhi CM said.