Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra told a rally at Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas that the “final draft of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA is expected to be ready by March 30 next year”.
Reacting to it, the TMC leadership on Monday called Mishra’s statement a dirty ploy of the saffron party to polarise votes before the general elections.
The CAA seeks to grant Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan entering India before December 31, 2014.
Asserting that “no one will be able to snatch the citizenship of the Matuas once the CAA is implemented”, the BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh, while addressing a gathering of the Matua community at Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas district on Sunday said, “For the past couple of years the process to sort out technicalities was on as a result of which things should be before you in a few months’ time so that Matuas will permanently be eligible for Indian citizenship.”
Matuas, numbering about 80-90 lakhs, are Hindu Scheduled Caste immigrants from Bangladesh who fled religious persecution post-Independence and migrated to India.
Although a significant portion of the community still resides in Bangladesh, those who migrated to India wield substantial influence over the voting patterns in 3-4 districts of Bengal.
The community has a sizable population in North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri, and North Dinajpur districts.
In fact the BJP MP and Union Minister Shantanu Thakur is himself a Matua and hails from Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas.
Rejecting the Union Minister’s statement, TMC spokesperson and MP Shantanu Sen on Monday said, “Matuas are a self-respecting people who will never fall into the trap of the BJP which is trying to divide
the voters along communal lines.”
Saying that Matuas were already citizens of India, he stated, “The very fact that they have been living in this country for decades, voting here, possessing all the identity cards, and enjoying equal rights raises the question of why there is a need to bring a separate law to legalise their citizenship. Tomorrow, they may bring laws to legalise the citizenship of the remaining population of the country.
“This amounts to befooling the Matua community, and the BJP will receive a befitting reply in the elections. They will lose once again, as they did in the 2021 Assembly elections, because the Matua community has more faith in Mamata Banerjee than in the BJP.”