Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee today said the Centre was turning Indian people into refugees in their own country. Before leaving for Delhi, she called a press conference in Kolkata on Monday and expressed her reservations about the final draft of the NCR in which 40,000 people in Assam had found no place.
She said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government was trying to identify and isolate people who don’t vote for the ruling party.
At the press conference she said she would try to meet Home Minister Rajnath Singh and discuss the matter with him. Banerjee has sent a team of her party MPs to Assam and if necessary, she said she would visit the state too, she said.
She said that the Centre should have had a conversation on the matter with Bengal before taking such a huge step, and that every state had people from other states including Gujarat and Maharashtra.
“So many Bengalis, Biharis, Hindus, Muslims are there… there are women and children among them. Many of them have been identified as foreigners and will be sent back. But they are very much Indians,” she said. She was worried about their future and worried that they might face torture.
A number of political parties in the Opposition objected to the NCR’s final draft list that excludes 40 lakh people from the state. Those who protested includes the Congress, Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party and the CPM – who raised the issue in Parliament.
The Centre meanwhile, has allayed fears of those who feel they might be deported as a result of being left out of the list. Satyendra Garg, home ministry officer in charge of the Northeast, was quoted saying, “Based on this draft no reference case will be sent to foreigner tribunal or put in a detention centre.”
Claims and objections from those left out of the citizen’s list will be taken up from August 30.
The NRC counts only those as citizens who are able to prove that they were living in Assam on or before March 21, 1971. It includes names of those in the 1951 list and their descendants and under several other categories specified. Of the 3.29 crore people who had applied for their names to be included, 2.89 crore are in the citizen’s list.
