In an apparent bid to milk the issue of National Register for Citizens (NRC) a fear of which has swung a large chunk of voters away from the BJP in the just concluded Assembly by-elections, Mamata Banerjee on Monday said no one will be able to impose NRC in Bengal as long as Trinamool Congress is in power.
Addressing a large gathering at Kharagpur Banerjee the Chief Minister said “I call upon the people to shun all the fear they have for NRC and Citizenship Amendment Bill because as long as we are there in power we will never allow it in Bengal.”
Saying that the NRC and CAB were two sides of the same coin and that the Centre was laying down a bigger trap (than NRC) by bringing CAB Banerjee said “India belongs to one and all and no one can throw out the legal citizens of this country or make them refugees in their own homeland by passing an act… The people have no reasons to worry till we are there because we will not allow NRC to come to Bengal.”
Reminding how a number of people died out of NRC panic in Bengal, Banerjee earlier had asked “how many have died in Assam? Since Independence, people have come here, they are voters here, they have jobs here, they were born here. Now after so many years, you are asking us who is a citizen and who is not?”
Saying that the basic features of the Constitution must be preserved the Chief Minister said that citizenship is a constitutional right.
“The new bill is unconstitutional, badly planned and discriminatory,” Banerjee said adding the founding fathers of the Indian Constitution never wanted the basic features of the Constitution to be preserved at all cost.
Banerjee who held a “thanksgiving rally at Kharagpur, a seat the TMC won for the first time after its formation in 1998, said, “Citizenship is a constitutional right. If one snatches citizenship, there will be another independence struggle… Please hold meetings at every booth, market, street corners and warn people. This is a struggle for our rights. Let us take this pledge. We will protest democratically. We will not allow NRC or CAB in our State. Whoever will protest, we will give support.”
A traditional Congress bastion, BJP State president Dilip Ghosh had won from Kharagpur Assembly seat in 2016. Later on he left the seat after he was elected an MP from the area.
The constituency went to by-polls in the last week of November along with Kaliaganj in North Dinajpur and Karimpur in Nadia districts. In all the three seats TMC came out victorious by huge margin neutralizing the huge lead the BJP had taken from these Assembly segments in the April-May parliamentary elections.
Reacting to Banerjee’s statements Ghosh said the Chief Minister was speaking against NRC or CAB because she wanted to win the vote of a particular community. “Whatever she is saying is the part of her vote-bank politics. She wants to preserve her vote bank but we will puncture her balloon of lies.”