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NRC panic drives Malda residents to camps for ID cards

Malda: Long queues in front of ration shops in Malda’s Kaliachak and Sujapur have vanished, now that Puja vacations have started. But this has nothing to do with chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s repeated assurances that NRC is not going to happen in West Bengal, or home minister Amit Shah’s assurance to non-Muslim refugees in the state.



There has been no let-up in tension over getting papers ready for a National Register of Citizens exercise. Only, the scramble for identity proof has shifted from ration shops to camps organised by NGOs such as Bangla Sanskriti Mancha.

Volunteers there are helping residents make corrections or remove discrepancies in their voter ID cards and ration cards. Habibur Sheikh from Najirpur, for instance, has an error-free ration card but his voter card and Aadhar card show his name as Sheikh Habibur.

All residents are busy getting land records ready along with other ID cards after Amit Shah , also the BJP president, recently said that not a single Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh or Christian refugee will have to leave the country. But his silence on Muslims has only intensified their underlying tension. “We have all papers,” said Habibur and others like him, trying to conceal their anxiety.

Social worker Md Najibul Rahman was more forthright. “The CM’s repeated announcements against NRC makes us feel that something might be on the anvil. We are not ready to take chances,” he said.

Samir Kundu, who runs a small roadside shop, came to India in the late 1980s and settled in Bachamari Colony of Old Malda . His relatives are still in Bangladesh. Kundu doesn’t own land or house. “I have no documents other than the voter ID card. What will I do?” he said.

The increasing disbelief in Hindu settlements such as Bachamari Colony and Mangalbari is one reason why Shah said the other day that the Modi government will pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill before carrying out the NRC exercise. “We will socialise with Puja revellers and then reach out to refugee households, immediately after the Pujas,” said BJP state general secretary Sayantan Basu.

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