I wrote on the NRC two days back. The Supreme Court, which is monitoring the NRC has ordered no rollback and as well has restrained any form of coercion over those deregistered. The Home Minister of India has clarified that it is merely a draft and has no final binding on those affected.
In the meanwhile, opposition parties, sensing an opportunity to corner the government, have stalled the proceedings inside and outside of the parliament, led by TMC. The striking face from the opposition that has emerged to spearhead the protest is Ms Mamata Banerjee, the CM of West Bengal.
She has warned of a bloodbath and a civil war, decrying that the BJP directed the entire exercise of NRC against Bengalis, but forgetting the difference between locals and Bangladeshis, who though share the commonness in language and culture, are foreigners per se. She has even invited all the illegals, roughly around 4 million to West Bengal, offering shelter, ignoring the fact that West Bengal ranks fifth in the poverty charts, behind only Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The state’s overall BPL ratio is 26% and more than 2.3 million from the state are homeless.
Looking to reap political dividends and to consolidate her position as a challenger to the PM’s post, Mamata by taking an irreconcilable but questionable position, has walked into a trap that may have been cleverly laid by the BJP, which has not scored any notable success in West Bengal. BJP’s great war machines had to work hard, provoking Didi to do something as silly as to explosively compare all others like Biharis, Bengalis, North Indians and South Indians with the Bangladeshis.
A delegation of TMC members has flown into Assam, where the NRC exercise is underway. However, there is no unrest in Assam. It’s not quizzical as to what the objective of the delegation was, which was restrained at the airport and could be bundled back to Kolkata in the next flight. It is not unusual for the governments to bar political opponents from visiting areas to prevent any untoward incidences, which has happened several times in West Bengal too.
Mamata is meeting all and sundry, from Sonia, Rahul, LK Advani, to names which I never thought existed. The only goal, to join hands and to oust Modi. The response, I note from my learned friends from Delhi have been tepid, the high and mighty in the Indian polity preferring to keep mum on NRC while maintaining the mercurial leader from Bengal in good humour.
Quickly cashing on the turmoil, BJP has hit the streets with the infamous ‘michils,’ processions, paralysing many parts of Kolkata. I guess Mamata has to hurry back to Kolkata to thwart attempts by the state BJP in polarising the otherwise disinterested citizens of Bengal. The demand for NRC in West Bengal has never been more vociferous than now, which may churn the fortunes of many political parties!
I am sure that the Supreme Court will not be inhuman to push 4 million people out of Assam, without addressing various related issues involved. Judicial orders have to be implementable too!
The impatience of the coterie around the CM to push her out of West Bengal to the hot seat in Delhi, should not cause à la Tripura in West Bengal in 2019!
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide voix
