As West Bengal also shares a border with Bangladesh, concerns over illegal immigration from across the border have been rife.
New Delhi: After making the updation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam a national issue, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now stepping up its demand for the contentious exercise to be conducted in West Bengal as well, claiming they might even go to court to demand it.
“We urgently need NRC in West Bengal. In fact, this is a state where it is needed the most. We have around 1 crore infiltrators,” state BJP president Dilip Ghosh told ThePrint.
Ghosh said NRC is 100 per cent necessary and the party is taking steps towards it.
“We are conducting seminars and holding discussions at the ground level, trying to mobilise public opinion. We will demand it officially at the appropriate forum. We are planning to move the court,” said Ghosh.
NRC in Assam
The exercise of updating the NRC in Assam aims to identify those who immigrated ‘illegally’ from Bangladesh post 24 March, 1971. The final draft, released July-end, left out the names of around 40 lakh applicants.
The exercise, ordered and monitored by the Supreme Court, is in accordance with the 1985 Assam Accord, signed between the government of India and leaders of the six-year long Assam movement.
Also read: Process, purpose and politics: All you want to know about Assam’s NRC
As West Bengal also shares a border with Bangladesh like Assam, concerns over illegal immigration into the state from across the border have been rife. And, now with the process on in Assam, the BJP has become active in demanding it for West Bengal as well.
Earlier, party general secretary in-charge of West Bengal Kailash Vijayvargiya had indicated the party’s demand for NRC in the state, hours after the final draft was released in Assam.
Hindutva plank
Initially, the BJP had nothing to do with either the demand for NRC in Assam — the leaders of All Assam Students Union and All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad signed the accord — or its implementation.
The exercise began under the Congress government in the state in 2015 and by the time the BJP government came to power in 2016, the process of verification was already on.
However, the BJP has attempted to make this fit into its Hindutva narrative, raking it up constantly across the country and connecting it to the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which seeks to give citizenship to illegal Hindu immigrants.
Also read: Assam’s citizens’ registry mess shows ‘India is for Indians’ notion is hypocritical
NRC has also been a recurrent theme of BJP president Amit Shah’s speeches, from Rajasthan to West Bengal. Stoking a controversy, he even referred to ‘infiltrators’ as “termites”.
In July, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee slammed NRC, even offering to provide shelter to the 40 lakh who failed to find their names in Assam’s final draft.
‘Won’t allow safe haven’
In tune with the BJP’s political narrative, Ghosh said, “Both NRC and the Citizenship Amendment Bill should happen simultaneously in West Bengal.”
He added, “We will step up demand for NRC. But the Citizenship Bill also has to come, since we have to protect the Hindu refugees.”
The BJP has raised the pitch on NRC officially as well. At the end of its two-day national executive meet earlier this month, the party said, “The PM (Narendra) Modi-led Indian government will not allow India to be used as a safe haven by illegal infiltrators.
“Each infiltrator will be identified, stripped of citizenship and deported,” the party added.
The BJP also said it has started the exercise of identifying Rohingya refugees in various cities and will come up with a process to deport them.
Didi is unDemocratic.. if NRC is done Didi is sure to loss power. It’s full gundaism in West Bengal. Having a right wing democratic party is better than having a autocratic left party.
Didi is safe in her citadel. Bengal has also had, overall, a good record of communal harmony since independence, which needs to be nurtured and sustained.