Desher Samay : special correspondent
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who is known for her fiercest criticism of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), on Friday reiterated that no such exercise will be held in her state. Speaking at the State Secretariat in Nabanna, Mamata said on September 20 after arriving in the city , ”NRC will not come to Bengal.
Nobody will be pushed out of Bengal. People who have been living in Bengal for so many years, they’ll stay here the same way.”The firebrand Trinamool Congress supremo also accused the BJP of using NRC as a ”tool of politics.”
While the Trinamul supremo is fighting the NRC battle at political and executive level his trusted aide from Bongaon , the former Bongaon MLA from Trinamul and present chairman of the North 24parganas district RTO board already took the matter to supreme court.
According to Seth the suprteme court had already played down a vicious plot of BJP executed by the election commission of India (ECI)by not revising electoral roles from 2106 to 2018. ” It is only a pressure from the apex court to the ECI counsel to revise the role in March 12 this year the things started moving in right direction. Nearly 40 lakh people here were kept out of the voting process .It seems that BJP had started NRC clandestinely.” said Gopal.
He demanded that still people who dont know how to process documents , put pressure on government offcials and mostly illiterate are becoming victim of this revision . Gopal said that a sustantial number of such persons were kept out of the purview of electoral role revision.
Very logically Seth demanded that central government should put in NRC related website the voter list of 1951 and migrants data so that people across the country can access it.”But BJP is not dong it .
There is lack of transparency in the method. If this is done in this manner I will again will go to the apex court for the legitimate right of tese helpless people. Central covernment should open a website where complains can be filed for monitoring.” Gopal admiited that quarantining illegal migrants is good process only if it is followed logically , rationally and without any prejudice.
He also claimed human touch even for the migrants.
Allaying concerns, the TMC leader urged the Bengal voters to check if their name in included in the voter list or not.
Mamata said that she had flagged several irregularities in the NRC exercise in Assam to the Home Minister. Mamata’s meeting with Shah came just a day after he had reiterated the need for a countrywide NRC.
Mamata said that they had given given a letter to the home minister that the NRC in Assam has left nearly 19 lakh people out. Some are Bengali speaking. Some are Hindi speaking. Some Gorkha and some local Assamese are also there. We said genuine voters must get a chance and feel that they are Indian and that’s why we had come to discuss the issue with the home minister.
He didn’t say anything about an NRC in Bengal and it is not needed either,” Banerjee said in New Delhi.The West Bengal Chief Minister further said that Shah had assured her that he “would look into the problem”. This meeting with Shah took place a day after Banerjee met PM Narendra Modi.
The West Bengal Chief Minister, after a spell of 15 months, met PM Modi in New Delhi on Wednesday.
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a register maintained by the Government of India containing names and certain relevant information for identification of all genuine Indian citizens.
In Assam`s final document of the NRC, over 19 lakh didn`t find their names mentioned.
