West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday claimed that the names of 25 lakh Bengali-speaking Hindus and 13 lakh Muslims have been removed from the list. This scathing attack from the chief minister comes amidst the ongoing crisis between the ruling government and Trinamool Congress (TMC) over Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC),
Mamata claimed that Centre has been continuously targeting Muslim and Hindu communities for the sake of taking an action on illegal migrants from Bangladesh. "If you do not like a particular community, you cannot spread hatred like this. Hasina ji (Bangla PM) is welcome, others not? Didn't Bengal participate in the freedom struggle? What's wrong in speaking the Bangla language?" she was quoted as saying by NDTV.
While questioning the ruling government, Mamata asked what if the NRC method was applied to every other state in India. The TMC chief said: "There are a lot of Bengalis and Biharis in Maharashtra. In Bengal, we have Marwaris and Biharis. If this game continues, will it be good for us?"
Mamata also narrated her encounter with the people in Assam and said that around 1,200 people who protested against the exclusion from NRC were being sent to the detention camps. "Many people from Murshidabad are in the camps.. Atrocities must be stopped. Why are women and children in detention camps?" the CM added.
The West Bengal CM cited other examples from the past in which a few names of people, including the family members of freedom fighters, were deleted although they reflected on voters' list in 1965 and 1966. Banerjee further alleged that BJP has been accusing and charging the innocents under false cases and labelling them as infiltrators, which is evident in the presence of 400 companies of security forces.
She stated proving citizenship through a number of documents could be a difficult task for uneducated and economically backward rural masses. "I want to ask Amit Shah does his mother and father have birth certificates? If you ask me, I do not have my parent's birth certificates. Would Swami Vivekananda have the certificates? Atal ji is ill now, so I cannot ask him, but I wish I could ask him whether he has all the certificates? One family can keep the record, not all. I belonged to a backward family, certificates were not maintained?" Mamata was quoted by Zee News as saying.
She said that the day is not far when BJP will ask her to prove citizenship. Mamata feels that NRC was a political game for BJP ahead of Lok Sabha elections, "This is a political move ahead of the elections. Sometimes they will play India-China, sometimes they will play India-Pakistan. I am also hearing that they are getting the currency notes printed outside the country."
Moreover, she has challenged the BJP to initiate NRC in Bengal if it ever wins in the state. "One should not desire to win Bengalis' hearts with repression," she said.
