Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday cited the proposed National Registry of Citizens (NRC) as the reason behind the death of a man in a small town in North 24-Parganas district, the claim coming against the backdrop of the Election Commission beginning its revision of electoral rolls that the national Opposition calls a ploy to bring in the NRC through the backdoor.
“Fifty-seven year old Pradeep Kar from 4 Mahajyoti Nagar, Panihati, Khardaha (Ward no. 9) has taken his life, leaving behind a note that says, “NRC is responsible for my death.” What greater indictment can be there of the BJP’s politics of fear and death,” Mamata wrote on her X (formerly Twitter) handle.
Contacted by The Telegraph Online, Panihati’s Trinamool MLA Nirmal Ghosh said: “I am there with the family right now.”
The exact circumstances around the death of Kar are yet to be known. When the cops broke open the door to his room, a notebook with details of the NRC process scribbled page after page was found.
In the last entry in his notebook, Kar allegedly held the NRC responsible for his death.
The death of the 57-year-old came on the same day when the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls was launched in the state with the aim of sanitising the voters list ahead of next year’s Assembly polls.
“It shakes me to the very core to imagine how, for years, BJP has tormented innocent citizens with the threat of NRC, spreading lies, stoking panic and weaponising insecurity for votes,” Mamata wrote. “They have turned constitutional democracy into a draconian law-regime, where people are made to doubt their own right to exist. This tragic death is the direct consequence of BJP’s venomous propaganda.”
The NRC was launched in Assam in 2019 (though Assembly elections will be held in Assam next year along with Bengal and the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala, it has been kept out of the SIR ambit), in which around 1.9 million of the 33 million population, many of them Hindus, were left out.
The BJP leaders in Bengal have claimed the SIR would only affect those who have entered and continued to live in Bengal without valid documents.
Several residents of Bengal in North Dinajpur and Alipurduar have said that they have received NRC notices from the Assam government asking them to appear before the Foreigners’ Tribunal with documents to establish they are Indian citizens living in India before 1971, the cut-off year for the NRC in Assam.
“Those who sit in Delhi and preach nationalism have pushed ordinary Indians to such despair that they are dying in their own land, fearing they will be declared ‘foreigners’,” said Mamata.
The chief minister demanded the Centre stop the NRC.
“Bengal will never allow the NRC, and never allow anyone to strip our people of their dignity or belonging. Our soil belongs to Maa, Mati, Manush, not to those who thrive on hate. Let the Delhi zamindars hear this loud and clear: Bengal will resist, Bengal will protect and Bengal will prevail,” she wrote.