Is Amit Shah planning to throw Muslim refugees in West Bengal into the Bay of Bengal?

Narendra Modi has told Sheikh Hasina that NRC would not affect Bangladesh. More than dozen people, mostly Hindus, have committed suicide in the state last month over NRC fears

Union Home Minister Amit Shah addresses a public-awakening programme on NRC in Kolkata
Union Home Minister Amit Shah addresses a public-awakening programme on NRC in Kolkata
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Tathagata Bhattacharya

Union Home Minister and BJP’s national president Amit Shah has unequivocally stated that the government will extend the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to West Bengal. This is a 180-degree turn on part of the ruling party within a week. BJP’s state president for West Bengal Dilip Ghosh had last week said, “We are not even raising the topic of NRC. It is Trinamool that is raising this bogeyman for political gains.” The BJP in West Bengal has recently come under pressure to clarify its stance on NRC after a spate of more than a dozen suicides over the issue swept the state in the last one month.

However, Shah added that the Citizenship Amendment Bill would be passed to accord Indian citizenship to all Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist refugees. “People of Bengal are being misled about the NRC…I assure all Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain refugees they won’t have to leave the country, they will get Indian citizenship and enjoy all the rights of an Indian national,” he said.


However, keeping in mind the massive protests that past introduction of the bill had set off in the North-East and reservations of nearly all of BJP’s allies in the North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), it is a mystery as to how the BJP wants the bill to be passed. Some party insiders think the BJP will reach a compromise with its NEDA partners by leaving the North-East out of the arrangement. But there is no unanimity about it in the party as it stands to lose its Bengali Hindu vote base in the Barak Valley region of Assam.

Shah also insisted that all infiltrators (read Muslim refugees) would be thrown out of the country. This again does not sync with what Prime Minister Narendra Modi told his Bangladeshi counterpart last week.

Modi had assured Sheikh Hasina that NRC would have "no impact on Bangladesh" and there was no need to be worried about it. He gave the assurance at a meeting with Hasina at Lotte New York Palace hotel on the sidelines of the 74th UN General Assembly on last Friday.

If Muslim refugees are not sent to Bangladesh, a question arises as to where Shah wants to throw them? Detention centres or into the Bay of Bengal?

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Published: 01 Oct 2019, 6:00 PM