In West Bengal, the bone of contention among political rivals for years has been the influx of nearly 1 crore people in 1971 from then East Pakistan — few returned.
ASSAM AND the rest of northeast India is on the boil over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019, but it is in West Bengal that the proposed legislation will play a critical part if the BJP-led central government goes ahead with a nation-wide National Register of Citizens (NRC) to identify illegal immigrants.
With West Bengal going to polls in 2021, the BJP fielded as many as five MPs from the state to speak on the Bill in the Lok Sabha Monday — state chief Dilip Ghosh, Mahila Morcha chief Locket Chatterjee, Darjeeling MP Raju Bishta, Shantanu Thakur whose Matua community moved from Bangladesh fearing religious persecution, and Soumitra Khan who switched from Trinamool before the Lok Sabha polls. It was the most number of MPs who spoke from any state for the party. In contrast, it fielded just three MPs from Assam.
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