West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal assembly Suvendu Adhikari.
Credit: PTI
Kolkata: To take on the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal in the assembly elections next year, the Bharatiya Janata Party is pinning its hope on the Special Intensive Review of the electoral rolls, but is also struggling to allay the fear about the process among the people of a community it is wooing in the state.
The infighting within the BJP came out in the open once again when a camp organised by the party at Kalyani in Nadia to reassure the Hindus, who crossed over from Bangladesh to India over the decades, was recently vandalised, allegedly by a faction within the local unit of the party itself. Asim A, BJP MLA even warned the party of the wrath of the Matuas, a Hindu lower-caste community with roots in Bangladesh but now living in large numbers in West Bengal and other states in eastern India, if their citizenship came under question during the SIR of the electoral rolls in the state
The imminent SIR of the electoral rolls by the Election Commission triggered fear among the Matuas, a Hindu lower-caste community with roots in Bangladesh but now living in large numbers in West Bengal and other states in eastern India. The BJP, which has been competing with the TMC to expand its support base within the community, is organising camps to allay the concerns among the members of the community over the implications of the SIR on their citizenship status.
With the EC likely to start the SIR of the electoral rolls in West Bengal soon, the BJP top brass has asked the party’s local leaders to organise at least 700 camps, particularly in the border districts of the state, to reassure the Hindu refugees from Bangladesh that they could apply for citizenship of India, taking advantage of the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019.
Suvendu Adhikari, a BJP heavyweight and the Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal assembly, said that the SIR by the EC would lead to disenfranchisement of over 2.4 crore Muslims, who illegally crossed the Bangladesh to India and made their way into the electoral rolls of the state. The BJP has been accusing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government of facilitating the illegal migration of Muslims from Bangladesh to India, helping them settle in West Bengal, and thus turning them into a vote-bank for her TMC.
“The SIR will strike out the Bangladeshi Muslims from the electoral rolls and, once it is done, the TMC will be easily ousted from power in the next assembly elections,” Adhikari said, adding: “No Hindu will lose the right to vote. Nor will any Indian Muslim.”
But, Asim Sarkar, a BJP legislator, said that the Matuas would not forgive the saffron party if their citizenship status came under question due to the SIR of the electoral rolls in West Bengal. Sarkar is known to be a leader of the Matuas. Shantanu Thakur, a BJP MP and a union minister of state, said that none of the Hindu refugees, who had come to India from Bangladesh, would be disenfranchised. Shantanu’s aunt Mamata Bala Thakur, a TMC MP, however, said that the Matuas would be unfairly and unnecessarily put into trouble by the SIR. Shantanu and Mamata Bala – both members of the first family of the Matuas – have been fighting for leadership of the community.
Matuas are a religious sect born out of a reformist movement in the early 19th century and comprising some lower castes, which had then been treated as untouchables by the upper caste Hindus of undivided Bengal. The Matuas grew in number in West Bengal, as many of them migrated from the erstwhile East Pakistan after partition and continued to do so even after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. They now account for nearly 17% of the population of West Bengal and can influence the poll results in 40-45 of the total 294 assembly constituencies in the State.
Banerjee, the TMC supremo, recently accused the BJP of “playing with fire” and alleged that the SIR was just a cover to conduct in West Bengal an exercise similar to updating the National Register of Citizens in Assam.
“If the electoral rolls, which were used in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, were not incorrect, why are they being declared wrong, ahead of the 2026 elections?" TMC leader and a state minister, Shashi Panja, wondered on Saturday, questioning the EC’s plan to launch the SIR in West Bengal.