KOLKATA: In the seemingly endless election campaign trail in West Bengal, issues often keep resurfacing. It’s understandable. When the election battle is held over eight phases and four weeks, it becomes difficult for political parties to discover new issues on a daily basis.
As a result, things keep circling in a loop. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is one such point.
Time and again, Trinamool Congress and BJP have traded barbs over this. Ahead of the fifth phase of polling on Saturday, it was no different as Union Home Minister Amit Shah and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee engaged in a war of words over NRC.
At a rally in Nabadwip, the birthplace of Sree Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Mamata said if BJP wrests power in the state, it will send refugees to detention camps and cited the example of Assam.
In response, Shah accused her of depriving refugees of citizenship by opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). He was addressing a rally in Tehatta, which is in the same district.
“Do not trust them. In Assam, the BJP-led government has started serving notices to refugees, who were left out of the final list of NRC, asking them to explain why they should not be evicted. The Assam government is also serving notices to send refugees to detention camps. If they come to power in Bengal, they will follow the similar route and send refugees to detention camps,” said Mamata, reiterating that she would allow neither NRC nor CAA in Bengal if she wins this electoral battle.
Shah, who had earlier said in north Bengal that there are no plans of implementing NRC right now, said Mamata was misleading the refugees.
“CAA is aimed to give citizenship to refugees who had to migrate from Bangladesh because of religious persecution. Mamata didi is opposing it. She is against refugees’ citizenship. She is depriving them of their rights,” Shah told the gathering in Tehatta, which has a sizable population of Hindu refugees.
Amit Malviya, BJP’s IT Cell head and co-observer for Bengal, accused Mamata of spreading fear over the issue of NRC despite the Union Home Minister’s announcement that there is no plan to implement it.
He also claimed by releasing an audio tape that Mamata has been instructing her party candidates to spread fear over the contentious issue.
“In the audio tape, she is heard telling her candidate at Sitalkuchi, where four persons were killed in Central paramilitary firing, to spread fear over NRC. She also directed him to lodge an FIR in connection with the firing instead of allowing the families of the deceased to lodge a formal complaint. She is also heard telling the candidate to engage professional lawyers to lodge the complaint. This is evidence showing that the chief minister is doing politics over dead bodies,” alleged Malviya.