Shah NRC vow sparks storm

MAIN UDDIN CHISTI, TT, 31 Mar 2019, Cooch Behar: A fullfledged political debate on the National Citizenship Register (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Bill have begun in north Bengal following BJP president Amit Shah's comment on Friday that the BJP would press for a similar exercise in Bengal to weed out "infiltrators" but give protection to non Muslim "refugees".

A day after Shah broached the issues in Alipurduar, all the non-BJP parties -- Left, Trinamul and even the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (Binay Tamang faction) -- took it up to and accused the saffron party of trying to po- larise people for narrow political gains ahead of the poll season.

"The BJP has brought up these issues for political gains... The other parties will give a counter narrative as both these issues would affect lakhs of people," said a political science professor of North Bengal University.

On Saturday, Trinamul leaders spoke on the twin issues and said that party chief Mamata Banerjee will rake it up during her visit to north Bengal and Assam next week.

"We will never let it (NRC) happen in the state as we have seen how people have suffered because of it in Assam. They will vote against BJP. Our leader Mamata Banerjee will be here next week and she will explain the BJP's divisive agenda to both people of Bengal and Assam," said Trinamul minister Rabindranath Ghosh, before adding that the Bengal chief minister would be visiting Assam's Dhubri on Match 5.

In Dhubri Parliament seat, Trinamul has fielded Nurul Islam Chowdhury.

According to Ghosh, after the NRC exercise was rolled out in Assam, it had also affected several families living in Cooch Behar and Alipurduar districts.

"This is because several women, who hail from these districts, have got married in Assam. Also, there are many others who are from Cooch Behar but have later settled in Assam for jobs and other purposes. These people have not found their names on the list," said Ghosh.

CPM leader and MLA Sujan Chakraborty, while addressing a gathering of around 5,000 people, said: "Because of the NRC, hundreds of people who hail from Cooch Behar are living amid uncertainty in Assam now. BJP now wants to introduce it here. By making such comments, the party has announced a war against residents of Bengal. It will never be true." "It (announcement) has come as a shock to the Darjeeling hill people where more than 80 per cent of population do not have land rights. It is a tell-tale sign of uncertain future for the hill people without land rights if BJP is voted to power," said Tamang.

Additional reporting by Vivek Chhetri in Darjeeling.