Members of a conglomerate of apolitical mass organisations that was formed to fight against the Narendra Modi government’s citizenship matrix launched a relay hunger strike on Thursday at Rajabazar in Calcutta where another outfit has been holding a dharna on the issue.
The Joint Forum joined forces with the United Forum for National Integrity to intensify their agitation against the National Population Register update from April 1.
The relay fast by members of the two bodies is to seek the cancellation of the NPR update and its de-linking from the census.
“Memorandums explaining the grounds for our opposition to the NPR have been sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. We will wait to see the responses and then decide on future course of action. If our patience is relentlessly tested, we cannot guarantee sitting quiet,” said economist Prasenjit Bose, the convenor of the Joint Forum.
Bose and six others launched the relay fast at the United Forum’s dharna site — named Shireen Bagh — for 24 hours till Friday evening. Others will take over the fast for the next 24 hours from Friday evening.
“Our first priority is to get the state government to put a stop to this… a decisive stop, not a tentative pause, through firm administrative action. If the state does not cooperate with 2.5 lakh employees for duty, the NPR update is impossible with the 100 staff members of the directorate of census operations here,” said Bose.
The Joint Forum has been trying to raise awareness of the NPR update for months and believes the way the NPR enumeration has been conjoined with the house-listing exercise of the census, it is bound to create confusion among citizens.
Bose and others in the Joint Forum have been building a movement against the Modi government’s citizenship matrix since the first half of last year. They had raised objections with the Assam chief minister, Bengal Assembly Speaker and the governor, too.