A Cooch Behar resident branded as a “suspected illegal migrant” has approached the district authorities for protection.
Uttam Kumar Brajabasi, a resident of Cooch Behar’s Sadialer Kuthi, around 745 km north of Kolkata, had received a notice from the Foreigner’s Tribunal in Kamrup, Assam, in the first week of January this year.
Brajabasi was informed that he had entered Assam illegally between January 1, 1966 and March 24, 1971.
“You could not produce any valid document before the police during enquiry/verification regarding your Indian citizenship within the stipulated period of time,” said the notice served to him. “On the grounds made on the reference, “you are suspected to be an illegal migrant.”
Brajabasi had appeared before the Kamrup court and informed that he and his parents were Indian citizens, and he also has voters’ ID, Aadhaar and ration cards. The court had directed him to produce the voters’ list of every election with his father’s name from before 1970 till death in 2008.
“The district office in Cooch Behar was burnt and copies of no documents before 1971 are available. The Cooch Behar district election office has not been able to submit the continuity list from 1966 to 2008,” Brajabasi wrote in his letter to the district magistrate.
Brajabasi said he has been able to obtain the certified list of the electoral rolls for the years 1966 and 2008.
“The foreign tribunal’s court is asking for the certified copy of every continuity voters list, but the authorities here cannot provide. The Foreigner’s Tribunal court has threatened that I will be declared a foreigner,” said Brajabasi. “My family and I are so poor that forget Guwahati, we have not even travelled outside the district. Yet, the tribunal has lodged a case against me.”
Brajabasi has requested the district authorities to provide him with the relevant papers supporting his citizenship to evade deportation.
“The case against my client was filed by the Assam government in 2015. After nine years they have sent the notice. NRC is not applicable in Bengal. How can the Assam government serve such a notice?” said Apurba Sinha, counsel for Brajabasi.
Bengal minister and local Trinamool leader Udayan Guha said Brajabasi was a Rajbangshi and the Kamrup police had no right to issue him a notice.
“He is an Indian citizen. Those who had moved to India before 1971 should not have to go through such problems,” Guha said.
Brajabasi’s case has come out into the open at a time when the ruling Trinamool in Bengal is up in arms against the special intensive revision being carried out by the Election Commission in Bihar.
Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has alleged the electoral revision was another way to push NRC and disenfranchise voters in Bihar and Bengal.
“A resident of Dinhata, Cooch Behar is being hunted like a criminal by Assam’s Foreigners Tribunal. Despite submitting every valid identity proof, he is being hounded and asked to cough up electoral rolls from every election between 1966 and 2008,” wrote the Trinamool on its X handle.
“Mamata Banerjee has made it crystal clear that witch hunt under the guise of NRC has no place in Bengal. We will not allow BJP to turn our land into another detention camp. They did it in Assam. They want to do it here. And if they ever come to power, no one will be spared,” the Trinamool has claimed.
