Hitting out
at Amit Shah who said a pan-India NRC would be conducted, Mamata Banerjee said
everyone living in the country were legal citizens.
Kolkata: A
day after Union Home Minister Amit Shah set 2024 as the deadline for
implementing NRC across the country, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
on Tuesday termed the citizens register as “BJP’s political rhetoric”.
She
said a pan India citizens’ register can never be a reality on the basis of
caste and religion as all persons living in the country are its legal citizens.
A citizens’ register would be a
blunder as it would face backlash across the country, she said.
“We will not allow the National
Register of Citizens (NRC), it will never happen in West Bengal. You cannot
implement NRC on the basis of caste and religion,” she told reporters in the
premises of the state assembly.
“NRC is a political rhetoric of
BJP. It can never be a reality. They (BJP) are busy using political rhetoric
but we should not fall into their trap. All people living in this country are
its legal citizens and no one can take away their citizenship,” Banerjee, who
is a staunch critic of the saffron party, said.
The TMC supremo said her
opposition to NRC is not driven only by politics but also on humanitarian
grounds.
“A
person who is living in the country for last so many decades, how can you just
announce him foreigner all of a sudden ? This is completely unacceptable. Pan
India NRC will never be a reality,” Banerjee said.
Her comments come a day after BJP
chief Amit Shah at an election rally in Jharkhand on Monday set 2024 as the
deadline for implementing the hugely divisive NRC across the country.
He asserted that “each and every”
infiltrator will be identified and expelled before the next general election.
The
omission of a large number of Hindu Bengalis from the final NRC list in
BJP-ruled Assam has apparently created panic among the people in West Bengal
and has allegedly led to 11 deaths in the state so far.
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