Mamata Banerjee: Lynching incidents are social evils and all of us have to come together to fight it.Reiterating that the Centre must ensure that no genuine Indians are left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday said that she was shocked to find out that one lakh people of the Gorkha community have been excluded from the list.
Also, expressing concern over the exclusion, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) leader Binoy Tamang said that his faction would meet Banerjee soon to discuss this issue, besides visiting Assam in the coming days.
The TMC supremo insisted that “justice should be meted out to all Indian brothers and sisters”.
“Earlier I was not aware of the full NRC fiasco. As more and more information is coming in, we are shocked to see that names of more than one lakh Gorkha people have been excluded from the list,” Banerjee said in a statement issued by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) leadership.
“In fact, names of thousands and thousands of genuine Indians, including those of CRPF and other jawans, besides the family members of former President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed have been excluded,” she added.
The updated NRC, which identifies bona fide Indian citizens in Assam, was released on Saturday. A total of 3,30,27,661 people had applied for inclusion in the register. Of them, 19,06,657 were excluded, a statement from the NRC state coordinator’s office said.
On Saturday, the Chief Minister had expressed concern over the exclusion of large number of Bengalis from the register.
“The NRC fiasco has exposed all those who tried to take political mileage out of it. They have a lot to answer to the nation. This is what happens when an act is guided by an ulterior motive rather than the good of the society and the larger interest of the nation,” she had said.
Tamang said the GJM will visit Kolkata next week to meet the Chief Minister on the NRC issue. “On behalf of the entire Gorkha caste and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, I express my sincere gratitude to Ms Mamata Banerjee for her supports for the Gorkha community, which has been left out in the NRC,” Tamang said.
In a statement, he further said that the GJM is deeply concerned about the events unfolding in Assam after the publication of the final list of the NRC, in which one lakh Gorkhas have been left out. “We strongly object to such discriminatory practices. A high-level delegation from the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha will soon visit Assam,” Tamang said.
The statement further read, “We want to question Bimal Gurung, Roshan Giri (also GJM leaders), the BJP party leaders from Assam and West Bengal, including the newly-elected BJP MPs and MLAs and their alliance partners, besides non-political organisations as to what their stand on the NRC is and on what happened to the one lakh Gorkhas in Assam. What will you do to save the Indian Gorkhas, specially the Gorkhas in Assam.”
