HPWO meets former President Pranab Mukherjee

Our Correspondent

Silchar, May 2: Members of Human Protection and Awareness Organization (HPWO), Kolkata, met and discussed issues and problems related to NRC, legacy data verification and the fate of Hindu Bengalis of the State of Assam with the former President of India, Pranab Mukherjee. They also submitted a memorandum to him and urged him to take concrete steps to solve this nagging issue. It has been mentioned in the memorandum that the fate of a large number of Hindu Bengalis lurks in the dark. The continuing process of NRC update in Assam is likely to ‘denationalize’ the Hindu Bengalis.

The states however should, according to National Human Rights Law, comply with their human rights obligations concerning the granting and loss of nationality. The memorandum states that Bengali speaking people of Assam have been virtually punished by asking them to appear before the Foreigners’ Tribunals on various trifling and negligible grounds like omission of alphabets and dissimilarity in pronunciation of names and related spellings. They have been sent to detention camps where sufficient food, clothing and health facilities are not supplied. Aged persons, men, women, children and ailing persons have to face a lot of problems and harassments.

Persons detected as foreigners by the Foreigners’ Tribunal are supposed to be denied staying in India. On the contrary, partition victim innocent Bengalis along with a large number of Bengalis residing generation after generation prior to the partition of Bengal in 1947 in Assam, are forced to stay in the detention camp during their trail in the Foreigners’ Tribunal.  The former President of India assured that he would look into the matter and try to solve the issue at the earliest.