Mamata Banerjee has been accused of being in contempt of the Supreme Court
Highlights
- Assam making massive register of citizens to weed out illegal immigrants
- First draft left out 1.3 crore residents, verification still in progress
- Mamata Banerjee alleges conspiracy to drive out Bengalis from Assam
A police case has been filed against Mamata Banerjee in Assam after multiple complaints alleged the West Bengal Chief Minister made an inflammatory speech over the National Register of Citizens or NRC exercise currently going on in Assam. Speaking at a public meeting at Birbhum district in Bengal on Wednesday, Ms Banerjee had criticised the citizens register exercise and alleged a conspiracy to drive out Bengalis from Assam by "excluding" their names from the first draft of the NRC, which was published on the midnight of December 31.
Following are the latest developments in this story:
The complaint was filed by Gauhati High Court advocate Tailendra Nath Das and the police have registered an FIR under Section 153(A) of the Indian Penal Code. The section pertains to promoting enmity among groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony.
Mr Das also accused Ms Banerjee of contempt of Supreme Court as the update of the NRC is being done under the direct the supervision of the top court.
"Bengalis are being threatened with eviction from Assam, being told your name not there on list... Wherever there is BJP in the state, there seems to be a conspiracy to evict other people," Ms Banerjee had said yesterday.
Today, Saugata Roy from Ms Banerjee's Trinamool Congress repeated her charges in parliament. Raising the issue during zero hour, he called the National Register of Citizens in Assam a "conspiracy to drive out the Bengali population".
To which Home Minister Rajnath Singh responded by saying nobody will be left out of the citizen's register. "This is a baseless allegation that they are trying to throw someone out. If someone's name has been missed, it will be included in the list," Mr Singh said.
The first draft of the new NRC was published with 1.9 crore names - out of 3.29 crore applicants - at midnight on December 31.
Included in the list is the self-styled commander-in-chief of the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) militant group Paresh Baruah - one of India's most-wanted. Among those not in the list are two parliamentarians - Radheshyam Biswas, a lawmaker from Karimganj and Badruddin Ajmal from Dhubri.
The union government maintained that there was still time for all other names which are at various stages of verification. According to the Home Ministry, lakhs of documents sent to other states for verification are yet to come back.
Migrants have long been accused of illegally entering the state from Bangladesh and taking land, causing tensions with local people and sporadic outbreaks of communal violence. The subject has been a hot-button issue that has also influenced the state's politics for decades.
Anyone living in Assam has been asked to prove that their forebears appeared either in the state's only previous register of citizens, compiled in 1951, or on any electoral roll published before March 1971 to be eligible for citizenship.
With inputs from PTIPost a comment