Bengaluru, Jan 19 (TIWN) Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday at a meeting here said that anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) voices are anti-Dalit.

"Seventy per cent of these refugees are Dalits. I want to ask the protesters that are against CAA, what will you benefit from protesting against these Dalits? Anti-CAA is anti-Dalit as well," said Shah at a Jan Jagran Abhiyan meeting at Nehru Stadium in Hubli, a town 415 km northwest of Bengaluru.

Shah claimed 60-70 per cent of the religiously persecuted minorities in the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh belonged to Dalits, including Matuas, Rajvanshis, Meghwals and others.

CAA offers citizenship to persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis and Jains from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, excluding all kinds of persecuted Muslims such as Shias, Ahmediays and others.

Castigating Congress Parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi, Shah said both Gandhi and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said that Article 370 should not be abrogated.

"Both say that CAA should not be implemented. I can''t understand the relationship between Imran Khan and Congress leaders," he said at the pro-CAA meeting.

Shah said Congress not only protested the CAA but every nationalistic move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who corrected a mistake committed by Gandhi''s forefather Jawaharlal Nehru.

Referring to Mahatma Gandhi, Shah said that the Mahatma told in 1947 that Hindus and Sikhs living in Pakistan have all the rights to return to India if they were not being treated equally.

It is government of India''s responsibility to help them, he said.

Giving a picture of the ill-treatment minorities suffered in the neighbouring countries, the Home Minister said, "Numerous rapes were committed. Religious shrines were broken down. The minorities weren''t given jobs, electoral rights and thus had to come to India as refugees."