NRC draft key updates: TMC team heads to Silchar to take 'stock of situation'; Assam displeased with Mamata's intrusion

Locked in constant disagreements over several issues, Mamata Banerjee and Amit Shah will be locking horns in the coming week in Kolkata when the combative BJP president lands in the city to hold a rally against the Trinamool Congress government and seek an Assam-like National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal. Upping the ante on the issue of alleged presence of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in West Bengal, Shah will take the battle to Mamata’s turf with a rally in Kolkata on 11 August amid indications from his party leaders that they will make it a poll issue.

With Mamata holding talks in the National Capital with Opposition leaders to take on the BJP over the NRC in Assam, Shah’s proposed rally underscores his intention to build the issue as a major poll plank in Bengal as Lok Sabha elections are barely eight months away, leaders were quoted as saying. A defiant Shah told reporters that he would definitely go to Kolkata on August 11 and dared the Mamata Banerjee government to arrest him after his party leaders claimed that the local police had yet not given permission to his event.

However, the Kolkata Police later said it had granted the permission, setting the stage for a showdown between the Trinamool Congress, the dominant political force in the state, and the BJP, which has emerged in recent polls as the main challenger to it but remains a distant second.

The prevailing sense in the BJP is that it could project Mamata as an “anti-Hindu” leader driven by her “appeasement politics” for minority votes over her strident opposition to the NRC, according to party sources.

6-member TMC team to visit Assam’s Silchar

There were reports which claimed that Mamata would speak in Lok Sabha over the NRC issue, however, the West Bengal chief minister met with several Opposition leaders and with BJP veteran LK Advani. Further sharpening her attack on the BJP, Mamata on Wednesday accused the saffron party of playing vote-bank politics, while also warning that the issue will “destroy” India’s relationship with Bangladesh.

Reports said that Trinamool Congress would send a six-member team of MPs to Bengali-dominated Silchar in south Assam’s Barak Valley on Thursday to take stock of situation since the final draft of the NRC was released on Monday. The Telegraph quoted Mamata as saying that the NRC exercise was targeted at those with Bengali surnames and would lead to a “civil war”. The TMC delegation is expected to land in Silchar at around 2 pm on Thursday. The team will also go to Guwahati on Friday. In Guwahati, it is likely to meet some intellectuals and eminent citizens on Friday afternoon.

The delegation includes — Sekhar Ray, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Ratna De Nag, Nadimul Haque, Arpita Ghosh and Mamata Thakur — apart from State Municipal Affairs and Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim and MLA Mahua Moitra. “We will be visiting Silchar, Guwahati and Nagaon. We will try to interact with the people whose names have been deleted in NRC,” one of the MPs told Mumbai Mirror . 

Mamata said only one percent of the 40 lakh residents, whose names are missing from the draft NRC, could be infiltrators, but people are being “harassed” in the name of infiltrators. She said she has appealed to all Opposition parties to send their respective delegations to Assam. The TMC chief said she has also urged former BJP leader Yashwant Sinha to visit the state.

“The NRC will destroy relationship between India and Bangladesh. Out of 40 lakh people whose names are not in the list of NRC, only one percent could be illegal infiltrators. But the BJP is trying to show that all those not included (in NRC) are infiltrators,” she told reporters outside the Parliament House. Mamata’s criticism of the exercise did not stop even though the Election Commission of India sought to clarify on the controversy of the missing people from the list.

Assam to keep eye on TMC team’s Thursday visit

The Assam Police plans to keep a strict watch on the TMC team arriving in Silchar to take stock of “situation”. The Pioneer quoted a senior police officer of the Assam Police who said that the Assam government has asked the police to keep a close watch on the Trinamool MPs and to ensure that no one disturbs the prevailing peace in the state, “particularly after the publication of the NRC, which has kept over 40 lakh people of the state out of the document for some discrepancies.”

Amid heavy criticism by Mamata, the Assam government said that the West Bengal chief minister’s opposition to the Supreme Court-monitored NRC in Assam amounted to “contempt of court” and she is not above the apex court. Mamata’s allegations against the NRC are “baseless”, Assam government spokesman Chandra Mohan Patowary, who is also the state’s parliamentary affairs minister, said.

Asked if the Assam government will file a contempt of court case against Mamata, Patowary said, “We will see at the appropriate time since she is speaking against the Supreme Court… She (Mamata) does not have the right to remark as the NRC is a legal process.”

“As a chief minister, Mamata Banerjee should have the basic knowledge that when she opposes a matter (NRC) monitored by the honourable Supreme Court it will amount to contempt of court. She is not above the Supreme Court,” he added. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal also cautioned people of Assam against “divisive forces” or to harbour any apprehension regarding the NRC updation process and reiterated that genuine Indian people whose names have not been included in the draft NRC would be provided ample opportunities to get themselves registered in the NRC through claims and objections. “Outsiders making provocative statements about NRC will not be accepted and the people of Assam have shown tremendous political maturity which has made the publication of complete draft NRC possible,” Sonowal told reporters.

Annoyed by her remarks, former Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi told The Telegraph , “Mamata should not lose sleep over Assam. We are not dead. We are still alive to take care of Assam’s problems.”

Other states demand Assam-like NRC

However, despite a bitter war of words between the two parties, BJP leaders in Delhi and Mumbai have also started pressing for similar action against ‘foreign infiltrators’. BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya told reporters that there could be over one crore illegal immigrants in West Bengal and suggest that NRC should be adopted in all border states to identify them. State BJP president Dilip Ghosh had earlier said that NRC will be published, on the lines of the one in Assam, if the saffron party was voted to power in the state. Shah has targeted win in 22 of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the next Lok Sabha polls. In 2014, the TMC had won 34 seats while the BJP could get only two.

Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari is among those who have demanded an Assam-like NRC survey in Delhi, reports said . Reports claimed that Tiwari had urged the Union Home Ministry to conduct a similar survey in New Delhi citing an increase in the number of Rohingya Muslims.

Tiwari wrote, “Please conduct a survey in Delhi too (like NRC) as a large number of Rohingya and foreign intruders are residing in Delhi and many of them have also attained Aadhaar and ration cards.” BJP MLA Raj Purohit made a similar demand in Mumbai, seeking implement of NRC not only in the city, but across the country. “I have written to district collector Mumbai, ACS Home, CP Mumbai, state EC to identify Bangladeshis in Colaba and Mumbai,” he said.

West Bengal biggest NRC defaulter, claims Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India

Mamata’s latest remarks bear significance for what the Registrar General of India had to say after the chief minister’s allegations. Claiming that West Bengal was the biggest defaulter in the NRC verification process pertaining to people who belong to a different state but reside in Assam due to various reasons, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India Sailesh said that he had deputed his own staff to help the West Bengal government in collecting the documents sought by the NRC authorities but the efforts were not fruitful.

Sailesh, who oversaw the entire exercise of the NRC exercise in Assam, said, “The largest number of documents that we have not received among all states was from West Bengal. We had to struggle. We had to follow up. But we have not received substantial number of documents from West Bengal. The response (of West Bengal) in terms of results was not satisfactory.”

Sailesh also said that there was a meeting through video conference between the officials of the West Bengal government and the NRC authorities during which a request was made to send the responses. “West Bengal was the only state where we made an exception by deputing my own staff to assist the state government. But we have not received all required documents for the draft NRC,” PTI quoted him as saying. Asked about the number of documents that the West Bengal did not provide, Sailesh said it would be a “substantial number”.

NRC and electoral rolls are “very different”: Election Commission

The poll panel said an exclusion from this list would not automatically result in their removal from the electoral rolls as registration of voters is decided by the election laws. Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat told PTI that the NRC and electoral rolls are “very different”.

He said the NRC is just one element that affects the electoral roll and quoted provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 to say that anybody can register as an elector if that person is a citizen of India, is above 18 years of age on 1 January of the year of enrolment, and is ordinarily a resident of the constituency in which enrolment as a voter is sought. “These three conditions have to be fulfilled with documentary evidence and that person can be enrolled in electoral roll,” he said.

Giving an example, Rawat said there can be a person who has not applied for the NRC in Assam but may be living there for a few years for job or for studies. “He is a citizen of India working in Delhi and is transferred to Assam where he is now living for the past two years and has applied with documents to be included in the electoral roll. The electoral registration officer, after checking the veracity of the document, includes his name because he is an Indian citizen, though he is not in the NRC,” he explained.

Rawat also said that this is a draft NRC. After this, in the next one month all these 40 lakh individuals will be informed about the reasons why their names were not included. Thereafter they can file their claims and objections and after decision on the claims, final list of NRC will be published. The CEC said the chief electoral officer of Assam will give a factual report in the coming week on various aspects arising out of the publication of the final draft NRC.

On whether there would a confusion, Rawat said, “No. There will be no confusion. If a person fulfils the three criteria and the electoral registration officer is convinced, he will be made part of the electoral roll.” People will have to satisfy the electoral registration officers that they are citizens of India to be part of the voter list and they can use documents available with them to support their claim, he added.

The EC voter enrolment exercise is independent of the NRC, though authorities responsible for the two lists are working in sync. “The EC, with its objective of ’no voter to be left behind’, has asked CEO Assam to coordinate closely with State Coordinator NRC so as to ensure that all eligible persons are included in Electoral Roll during Summary Revision 2019. This way a final electoral roll will be published on 4 January, 2019 to be used for General Election,” Rawat had said.