Senior Trinamool Congress minister Subrata Mukherjee has rubbished BJP president Amit Shah‘s claim of sweeping to power in West Bengal in 2021 and said the NRC issue will cost the saffrons ‘very dearly’.
Mukherjee said Shah was ‘day dreaming’ and oblivious to how the tide was turning against the saffrons in West Bengal after the ‘horrible experience of Bengalis’ in Assam during the NRC.
Also read: Assam NRC coordinator Prateek Hajela transferred to Madhya Pradesh
“Instead of day dreaming and making tall claims the BJP leader should first concentrate on good governance at the Centre and focus on reviving an economy in free fall,” Mukherjee said.
TMC general secretary Partha Mukherjee hit out at the BJP government at the Centre for allegedly trying to drive out Bengalis from Assam in the guise of the NRC updating exercise.
The BJP is planning to replicate the NRC exercise in Bengal but as long as Trinamul Congress is in power in the State it will never allow such a ‘divisive exercise’ to take place, TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee said.
“The BJP is trying to create a panic in Bengal in the name of NRC,” he said.
“Eleven people have already died in the state due to NRC panic,” he added.
“The people of Bengal will give BJP a befitting reply in the next assembly polls in the state,” he further said.
The exclusion of a large number of Hindu Bengalis from the final NRC list in BJP-ruled Assam had led to panic among the people in West Bengal and put the BJP on the defensive.
Hundreds of them had lined up at government and municipal offices across West Bengal in September to collect their birth certificates and necessary documents to face the NRC, were that to happen in the state.
More than 19 lakh people in Assam have been excluded from the recently published final NRC on August 31.
The Trinamul Congress has strongly opposed the implementation of NRC in the country and chief minister Mamata Banerjee has dared the Modi government to try start the NRC in her state.
Mamata has instructed her partymen to make a huge issue of the NRC fiasco in Assam to put the BJP on the defensive in West Bengal.
Amit Shah, apparently feeling the heat of large number of Hindu exclusions in Assam, had to go on record to say the NRC will be implemented in West Bengal after securing bonafide refugees (read non-Muslims) through implementation of the Citizenship Amendment bill.