West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Friday (September 20) that National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise will not take place in West Bengal. She was speaking in Nabanna Bhawan, the State Secretariat of West Bengal in Kolkata.
"Nobody will be pushed out of Bengal. People who have been living in Bengal for so many years, they'll stay here the same way," Banerjee added.
The Trinamool Congress chief lashed out at BJP over the NRC exercise in Assam. She alleged that Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre is promoting National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise as a political tool.
This is not the first time Mamata Banerjee has come out against the NRC exercise. Even in the middle of the exercise in Assam, she had said that a 'bloodbath' will follow if the exercise was carried out in the Northeast and other Indian states.
On September 7, the West Bengal Legislative Assembly even passed a resolution against the NRC.
Mamata Banerjee at that time, said the NRC was a fallout of the Assam Accord of 1985, but there was no such agreement in Bengal. She referred to the detention centres being constructed in Assam, and said: "They are coming up with a grand jail to house those excluded from the NRC final list".
The resolution termed the exercise "inhuman and autocratic". Supporting the resolution, the lawmakers called the NRC exercise "anti-Bengali" and gone through with a political motive by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
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