KOLKATA: Election strategist Prashant Kishor’s team is conducting a study to gauge the political impact of implementing National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal. The decision to conduct the study was taken after Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in Parliament that NRC would be implemented in all states across the country.
Kishor, who was hired by Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee after her party’s debacle in the Lok Sabha polls, directed the members of Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC) to conduct a survey in the districts. ‘‘The survey will be conducted mainly in the districts inhabited by the people who migrated from Bangladesh.
Districts such as Nadia, North 24-Parganas, Murshidabad, Malda, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar are inhabited by a considerable section of people who had come from Bangladesh,’’ said a senior Trinamool leader, who did not want to be named.
Mamata is against NRC and she had made it an issue during her campaigns before the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP, too, used the issue as a campaign tool. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had repeatedly raised the NRC issue while addressing rallies in Bengal. In Parliament, Shah had said that a Bill will be brought to provide citizenship to all Hindu refugees.