Trinamool to take out rallies in Bengal against draft NRC in Assam

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) Party Secretary General and West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said that his party will hold rallies on Saturday across West Bengal, except in state capital Kolkata, to protest the publication of the final draft of the National Register of Citizens in Assam. BJP national president Amit Shah is set to address a public meeting in the central part of Kolkata on Saturday. Chatterjee further said that a separate rally will be taken out in the capital city on Sunday. The party will also observe ‘Dhikkar Dibas’, or a day to reproach the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, on August 11 and 12.

A total of 32,991,384 persons had applied for inclusion of their names in the Assam NRC. While the final draft NRC declared on 30 July included the names of 2,89,836,77 persons, the names of 40,07,707 persons were missing due to some ‘discrepancies’. Chatterjee accused the Assam government of “deliberately omitting” Bengalis from the NRC draft and raised the demand of including these names in the final list as they were also Indians. He categorically said that “You cannot make a person refugee in his own country.”

An eight-member TMC delegation under the leadership of Sukhendu Sekhar Roy was sent to Silchar on August 2 to assess the situation in Assam in the wake of the NRC publication. Assam Police, however, detained the team and was not allowed to leave the airport. As a mark of protest, TMC observed ‘Black Day’ last week.

TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee criticized the Assam government for manhandling the TMC team at Silchar airport. She further accused that the BJP has as if imposed a ‘super emergency’ in the country. She was very critical of the exclusion of four million people deliberately from the final draft of NRC.