The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), is planning to conduct a huge campaign in West Bengal along the Indo-Bangladesh border to press for NRC in the state, reports The New Indian Express.
Sachindranath Singha, the organizational secretary of VHP’s east zone, said, “There are more illegal immigrants in West Bengal than in Assam. We want an implementation of NRC in West Bengal to identify the infiltrators and deport them. We will soon start a massive campaign in the border districts to create awareness among the original residents to press for NRC”.
He further reiterated VHP’s stance on ‘infiltrators’ and ‘refugees’ from Bangladesh, by saying, “We consider all Hindus who had fled religious persecution in East Pakistan and Bangladesh to seek shelter in India as ‘refugees’ and demand citizenship for all of them. However, we consider all Muslims who slipped into India from Bangladesh as ‘infiltrators’ and want their citizenship stripped and deported.”
While criticising Mamta Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, for her ‘hypocrisy’ over the NCR issue and for using ‘infiltrators as vote bank’, he restated that, “Simply being able to speak Bengali doesn’t mean they are Bengalis.”
Mamta Banerjee’s hypocritical attitude on the NCR draft in Assam has drawn a lot of criticisms. Mamta who has been quick at launching a lethal attack at the BJP-led government, accusing them of “forceful eviction” by saying that people had become ‘refugees’ in their own state and that the Centre was targeting Bengalis and Biharis, had ironically on 4th August 2005, (she, in the Opposition at that time and the state under the CPI(M) rule) held very differing views on this same issue.
During a session in the Lok Sabha, Banerjee had raised the issue of illegal immigrants in West Bengal, saying that illegals migrants from Bangladesh have spelt disaster for the state, and was upset about being disallowed to raise this issue in the Lok Sabha.
