West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday accused the BJP of creating panic over the NRC, and claimed six people lost their lives in her state fearing they will be thrown out of the country.
The TMC supremo also asserted she will not allow the Centre to prepare a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal.
"The NRC exercise will not be carried out in Bengal or anywhere else in country. It was conducted in Assam due to Assam accord.
"Even the Bihar chief minister (Nitish Kumar, a BJP ally) has said he won't allow NRC in his state. If the BJP is so keen on NRC, why doesn't it conduct the exercise in BJP- ruled Tripura? You will see that the Tripura chief minister (Biplab Deb) himself is out of the list," she told a meeting of trade unions' representatives.
The 1985 Assam Accord, signed in 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister, had ended a six-year mass movement, spearheaded by students, against illegal immigrants, mostly from Bangladesh, who had settled in the northeastern state.
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"Shame on the BJP for creating panic over NRC in Bengal, it has led to six deaths. Have faith in me, I will never allow the exercise to happen in Bengal. BJP should stop spreading rumours and canards over NRC.
"Who are they to ask for my papers? After so many years (of living in India), where from will I get my papers? Documents might get washed away in a natural calamity or get misplaced," Banerjee said.
According to state government sources, so far six NRC-related deaths have been reported.
While two people were claimed to have committed suicide after failing to locate documents that could prove they were living in India for a long time, four others were alleged to have died after they took ill while standing in queues at government offices to obtain their papers.
Reacting to Banerjee's statement, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said the TMC leader herself was trying to create panic over the NRC.
"She is trying to create panic among Hindus over NRC. We have clearly said all Hindus who have come from other countries will be given citizenship under the Citizenship (Ammendment) Bill (CAB), and then the NRC will be implemented to weed out infiltrators," Ghosh said.
More than 19 lakh people in Assam have been excluded from the recently published final NRC, which validates Indian citizenship of the people residing in the state.
According to TMC leaders, around 12 lakh people who failed to make it to the final NRC were Hindus, including Bengali-speaking Hindus.
The West Bengal's ruling party has dubbed the exclusion of Bengali-speaking people as an "anti-Bengali" step.
Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah had strongly pitched for replicating the NRC in West Bengal during the Lok Sabha campaign.
Shah, now the Union home minister, is scheduled to address a seminar on NRC here on October 1.
In her address, Banerjee accused the BJP of "undermining democratic values", and asserted "democracy exists in Bengal but it is under threat in several parts of the country."
The BJP is not talking about job loss or the downward spiral of the Indian economy, all it wants to do is serve its own political interests, she alleged.
She said a rally will be taken out on October 18 against privatisation and shutting down of public sector units across the country. She said she will take part in it. On September 26-27, the TMC will hold rallies in the city against privatisation, Banerjee said.
Banerjee claimed the Centre was planning disinvestment in 42 Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), including those that were making profit like the ordnance factories. "It will have a disastrous impact on India's defence mechanism and compromise national security," she said.
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