Amid apprehensions and lack of clarity on conditions set by the Centre to get citizenship, the pro-Trinamul Congress faction of Matuas has planned to launch an extensive campaign among the community from Thursday to convince them not to submit applications through the CAA portal.
Trinamul’s Bongaon candidate Biswajit Das said: “We will foil the BJP’s game plan to gain Matua support by establishing that legal provision is a trap to deny all rights and facilitate.”
The campaign is set to be launched from Nadia, a Matua bastion, to discourage sect members from submitting online applications until the Centre agrees to their demand of “unconditional citizenship” or comes up with more “clarity” to ensure no harassment of the people.
At the same time, the Trinamul leadership will launch an outreach programme, particularly in the Matua-dominated Ranaghat and Bongaon Lok Sabha constituencies, from this weekend to ask people not to get “trapped” by submitting applications through the portal.
The apparent objective is to prevent any fresh erosion in its Matua support base, particularly in the 14 AAssembly segments of Ranaghat and Bongaon Lok Sabha seats, where the community has developed a leaning towards BJP since 2019 for its “citizenship promise”.
The citizenship promise helped the BJP to erode Trinamul’s support base in 2019 when the saffron party won two Matua-dominated Lok Sabha seats — Bongaon and Ranaghat.
Matuas’ inclination towards the BJP continued even in the 2021 Assembly poll, when the Trinamul suffered a fresh setback losing four of seven Assembly segments to the BJP in Bongaon and all the seven Assembly seats under the Matua-dominated Ranaghat parliamentary seat.
With the organizational situation still not favourable for the ruling party before the ensuing Lok Sabha elections, particularly after the recent arrest of Jyoti Priya Mallick, and apprehending that the CAA notification could further make things difficult, Trinamul’s top leadership has directed both North 24-Parganas and Nadia leadership to work in coordination with the party sympathiser Matua leaders so that the loopholes in the CAA provisions are identified and presented before the sect members to swing them in their favour.
The Centre on Monday issued a notification for the implementation of legal provisions for citizenship under the CAA. But apprehensions and anxieties gripped people in large numbers, particularly among refugees like members of the Matua cult, for requirements of certain documentary evidence that are necessary for submission of citizenship application. At the same time, the initial declaration acknowledging the place of origin of an applicant created confusion and the Trinamul termed it as a “trap” to identify “foreigners”.
In such a situation, the pro-Trinamul faction of the All India Matua Mahasangha has planned a campaign against the CAA’s legal provisions to “protect” community members from the threat of being “isolated” from the “mainstream of the country”.
Pramatha Ranjan Bose, president of All India Matua Mahasangha and chairman of Trinamul’s Nadia South committee, said: “The new CAA provisions have come as a big threat for Matuas. The citizenship is a much-awaited issue and I feel it is needed. But the way the Centre has offered it has created confusion and anxieties about its ultimate result. None of us is sure whether submitting online application would land one in a detention camp or allow us to live here with dignity.”
“We demanded unconditional citizenship. But since the Centre has ignored it, we have planned to launch a movement from Thursday. At the same time we are urging people of our community not to submit online applications since it could be a trap to tag the applicant as a foreigner,” Bose said.
He added that the “No Submission” movement would be held in every block across the state, particularly in Matua-dominated zones, from Thursday.
Chief patron of the organisation Mamatabala Thakur, a Rajya Sabha MP, will also join the campaign.
With the nation waiting for the announcement of Lok Sabha polls dates, the Trinamul leadership is trying to fast-track its movement to convince Matuas about the “dangers” of the Centre’s “citizenship trap”.
“I think people have understood the lie of the BJP. So we have decided to make them aware about the threat that has come in the garb of CAA provisions,” Das told The Telegraph.
General secretary of the BJP-led faction of the All India Matua Mahasangha Mahitosh Baidya, however, refuted the allegations.
“The implementation of the CAA has panicked the Trinamul leadership and they are staring at defeat in Ranaghat and Bongaon Lok Sabha seats. So they are desperately trying to mislead the people. They will not succeed,” he said.