Under the burnt residues of around 300 makeshift huts in a slum on the outskirts of Kolkata, the BJP, the main opposition party in Bengal, is looking for Rohingya refugees.
A little over 12 hours after a fire ravaged the Ghuni bustee near New Town Eco Park’s Gate 6, on 17 December, BJP’s IT cell head and co-incharge for Bengal, Amit Malviya, claimed the ruling Trinamool had orchestrated the fire that raged from Wednesday evening to Thursday morning.This is the same slum that was infamously dubbed “mini Bangladesh” after news channels declared that “intruders” were leaving the shanty en masse once the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls started in Bengal.
The announcement of the SIR ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls did lead to an exodus of people from Bangladesh who had entered India, and many of them had also procured Indian documents. The Telegraph Online has reported on it.
There was also another lot that remained undocumented irrespective of the duration of their stay and employment.
The draft roll of the voters list published on 16 December revealed a total of 58.17 lakh voters have been deleted. Among them, 24 lakh have been marked as “dead”, 19 lakh as “permanently shifted” and 12 lakh as “missing”.
The Election Commission does not specify any voter as “foreigner”; rather, it marks them as ineligible.
Video Editor: Joy Das
