‘Religious & linguistic minorities are being harassed in name of NRC’: Shyamal Sarkar

A CORRESPONDENT

GORESWAR: A massive NRC awareness meet was held at Goreswar on Wednesday in the Baksa district. The meet was presided over by renowned social worker Arun Roy and the aims and objective of the meet was explained by Jitesh Biswas.

Maheswar Basumatary, EM of BTC, attended the well-attended awareness meet. He said that it was very unfortunate that names of many people were not included in the NRC although they had proper documents. He also urged the Assam government to come forward to help the genuine citizens who were being harassed in the name of NRC.

Shyamal Sarkar, chief adviser of All BTC Bengali Youth Students’ Federation (ABBYSF), alleged that many genuine citizens of India had been excluded from the final NRC due to the negligence of NSK workers. “We also wanted a proper National Register of Citizens. But after the final NRC, it has become a writ of death for Bengalis. It should be shunned immediately because it is full of anomalies.”

In many villages, father’s name was included and son’s name was excluded in the final NRC and on the other hand, one brother’s name was excluded while another brother who submitted the same documents was included in the NRC, he said. He added that the government should find out the culprits and send them to jail for these anomalies in the National Register of Citizens. He also questioned the BJP-led government why innocent public were being harassed in the name of foreigners and why border police were sending foreigner notice to Indian citizens.

“Religious and linguistic minority people are being harassed in the name of NRC which is quite unfortunate and uncalled for. We are peace-loving people and do not want any further problems between the Bengali and Assamese people,” he added.

Shiladitya Dev, MLA of Hojai LAC, while attending the meet as chief guest, assured the public not to panic. “The cut-off date of NRC should be 1951 and not 1971. We wanted foreigner-free NRC update but it has been seen that foreigners were included and indigence people were excluded in the final NRC. The NRC could be regarded as National Population of Register (NPR) and not National Register of Citizenship (NRC),” he said.

Local MLA Bhabesh Kalita said, “The existence of the Assamese is not at all at stake. Assam is ours and Bengalis are not at all a threat to our existence. There is nothing to fear. We want to end and stop this conflict and discord.” Dipak Dey, president of AABYSF, also attended the meet and strongly criticized the BJP-led Assam Government for the alleged harassment of Bengali people of Assam in the name of NRC and detention camp.

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