Alleging that Home Minister Amit Shah was working like the "hate minister" of the country, CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat on Saturday said the BJP-led central government was "fulfilling its agenda of communal polarisation".
Karat, addressing the inaugural session of the 22nd central conference of CPI(M)'s tribal wing, slammed Shah for his comments on the Shaheen Bagh protesters during campaigning for the Delhi assembly polls.
"Home Minister Amit Shah...asked people to push the buttons in EVMs so hard that Shaheen Bagh gets electric current from it. I think this kind of comment is unfair. That is why I say Amit Shah is not the home minister, he is doing the work of hate minister," she said.
Campaigning for a BJP candidate in January in Delhi, Shah had said, "When you press the button (of EVM) on February 8, do so with such anger that its current is felt at Shaheen Bagh."
Karat said the central government with its "brute majority" in Parliament was "fulfilling the agenda of communally polarising people".
"BJP thought they are at liberty to fulfil their agenda in the name of religion as they had sheer majority. But after 2019 Lok Sabha election, a new direction in politics was observed. People are now speaking against this government," she asserted.
The senior CPI(M) leader alleged that cases of mob lynching, communal violence and an "environment of hatred" were results of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah's "hate politics".
She also claimed that tribals in the northeast would be the worst hit by the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
"People of the northeastern region would not accept any citizenship on the basis of religion, because it is against the spirit of the Constitution," Karat said.
"There is no work in the rural areas, farmers aren't getting proper wages, the BJP is looting money from poor people and rights of indigenous people are being persecuted every day," she added.
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