Pakistani, Bangladeshi Hindus Have As Much Right To This Land As Me: Home Minister Amit Shah

Union Home Minister Amit Shah was speaking on the theme of "Invasion, Demographic Change and Democracy" at Dainik Jagran’s Narendra Mohan Memorial Lecture today, in New Delhi.

This speech was interspersed with blunt statements related to undivided India's partition, contemporary demography, illegal immigration, and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Towards the beginning of his speech, Shah listed the growth/decrease in the populations of Muslims and Hindus and India and said that all of the growth in the Muslim population cannot be attributed to a high fertility rate alone. A lot of it is owing to illegal immigration of the Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Moving to the Citizenship Amendment Act, the Union Home Minister first described the historic conditions necessitating a law like the CAA, and then went on to declare that 'Pakistani and Bangladeshi Hindus have as much right to this land as me'.

Shah also went on to say that while the ultimate responsibility of maintaining the integrity of India's borders stays with the Centre, and with him as the Union Home Minister, the Centre cannot fulfill its responsibility if the concerned state government does not cooperate on that count.