Known for her gallery-specific affectations on politically lucrative issues Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday emerged out of turn to bestow her affection on an alien community — about whose existence half of her Cabinet would not perhaps know till a few weeks ago.
Within hours of the Central Government telling the Supreme Court that the Rohingya refugees could be a security hazard for the nation, the Chief Minister claimed she had information that “most of the Rohingyas are not terrorists,” adding, even if some were, then it was the duty of the Government to take care of them sparing the rest of the community members the hardships they did not deserve.
Banerjee said, “they (the Centre) have asked us to send a list of their (Rohingya) children. We are doing so accordingly,” but it was not fair to make the entire community to suffer for a few of them.
Though the Chief Minister would not deliver impromptu ways to sift good from the bad she affirmed “there are good and bad people in every community. So it is not good to make the good suffer for the works done by the bad. For some people the whole community must not suffer because if a community suffers then the whole humanity suffers.”
Shifting promptly the burden of picking the needle from the hay stack on the Centre Banerjee said “if there are terrorists in the lot then let the Government should find them out and take action but the common people must not be made to suffer because there is a difference between a terrorist and a common man,” apparently playing for the minority gallery months ahead of the crucial panchayat elections.
Her Monday statement comes barely three days after she said “we are with the United Nations who appealed the international community to help the Rohingyas. We believe that all commoners are not terrorists.”
Incidentally her Government had earlier approached the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) requesting it to grant refugee cards to the Rohingyas. About 90 Rohingyas are currently parked in various jails in Bengal.
It is another matter however that her party had already started issuing cards (read birth certificates) to some members of the fugitive community if one were to go by the claims of Andhra Police which had arrested a person with fake birth certificates and ration cards.
Reacting to Banerjee’s stance Bengal BJP leader Sayantan Basu said “there are reports that the State Government is trying to enroll these Rohingyas in the voter list. This is a threat to national security.”