The legislation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act may have given some political edge to the BJP in West Bengal but the ruling party at the Centre is unlikely to get any electoral gains in Kerala.
Unsurprisingly, this newly enacted law which grants citizenship to non-Muslim illegal immigrants is expected to be the utmost electoral issue in West Bengal, Assam and Kerala that go to the polls in 2021.
The BJP may be hoping to wrest power in West Bengal and yearning for a second term in Assam, but in Kerala, the Act will face the first test during the three-tier local body polls next year.
Various Muslim organisations and political outfits which are already peeved at the final verdict of the Ram Janmabhoomi- Babri Masjid land dispute at Ayodhya are now up in arms against the contentious law which, they say, deliberately discriminates against Muslims.
People from Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come to India till December 31, 2014 from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan on account of their religious persecution there will be given Indian citizenship.
Joint resistance
The BJP, struggling to get a foothold in the bipolar politics of Kerala, has not been able to debunk the myths surrounding the law on naturalisation even as the ruling Left Democratic Front and the Opposition United Democratic Front are putting up a joint resistance against the Act now assented by the President.
In the three-tier local body polls in 2015, the consolidation of Muslim votes helped the CPI (M)-led LDF smash the Congress-led UDF. This was during the height of the beef controversy and cow protection after Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014. The Left parties repeated their winning performances in the 2016 Assembly polls as well.
Then the BJP emerged as a third force in the elections. However, the UDF swept the parliamentary polls held this year. In all these polls, the BJP was unable to counter the orchestrated campaign of either of the two coalitions.
Nevertheless the BJP leadership believes that the both the UDF and LDF may be trying to stoke unrest for securing the votes of the Muslim community which constitute over 26 % of the population in Kerala.
Hindu votes
But the fact remains that the party has not been able to consolidate the votes of the majority Hindu community in its favour till now.Besides, the State unit has been headless for nearly three months ever since P. S Sreedharan Pillai was appointed as Governor of Mizoram.
