Mamata Banerjee on Friday promised the people of Bengal to protect them against the contentious citizenship matrix of the saffron regime and against its efforts to implement the uniform civil code.

The chief minister, in her rallies at Hariharpara and Suti in the Muslim-majority district of Murshidabad on Friday, urged the people to close ranks on the BJP, which allegedly thrives on discrimination, division, and deprivation.

“I stopped the implementation of the NRC (National Register for Citizens) in Bengal. They had rejected 19 lakh people in Assam. I will never let them do that here. The moment the people apply for it (citizenship under the amended citizenship law), they will list those people as outsiders…. I am asking the people not to be afraid,” said Mamata in her Hariharpara address, referring to the infamous Assam example, where 19 lakh people were outside the final NRC, of whom 5.5 lakh were Muslims.

“I request the migrant workers, who came back during the holy month of Ramadan, not to leave the state before casting their votes. Do not give them the opportunity to put your names on the CAA, NRC lists, and snatch your rights,” she added in the district that sends lakhs out to other parts of the country as migrant workers.

The chief minister — whose movement against the citizenship troika in the past yielded substantial political dividends for her party — once again made it abundantly clear that she would keep harping on the controversial and feared trident (the NRC, the CAA, and the National Population Register) a major poll plank in Bengal, which has over 28 per cent minority population and around 46 per cent SCs, STs, and OBCs (taken together).

“People who do not have an Aadhaar card or ration card yet, do not worry. After the elections, we will conduct Duare Sarkar again. We will provide everything that the people need. Whoever is working here and living here, that is their identity,” she
said at Suti.

Mamata has, since February, maintained an unwavering focus on the renewed fears over the controversial citizenship tripod of the Narendra Modi regime at the Centre, and protection against it is one of her foremost promises in the Trinamool Congress manifesto for the general election, released on Wednesday.

“They (the BJP) have now included UCC in their manifesto… they will take away everyone’s identity including my Rajbanshi, tribal, minority, and Matua friends. People have different religions, follow different faiths, and have different traditions. India’s beauty lies in the unity in its diversity,” said the Trinamool chief.

“If needed I will stop eating, but as long as I am alive, the CAA, the NRC, and the UCC will not be implemented,” she added.

Since reports emerged of certain incidents of deactivation of Aadhaar cards in various parts of the state in February, Mamata wasted no time in accusing the BJP of once again trying to roll out the NRC in Bengal. She upped the ante following the implementation of the CAA in March, trying to let it snowball into a scale that could be difficult for the saffron camp to mitigate in a state where many have been living in terror of the Modi government’s citizenship matrix.

“This re-ignition of a deep-seated, collective fear of individual harm in the fairly immediate future is quite likely to yield concrete electoral results,” said a Trinamul insider.

With the venues of her rallies being in Murshidabad, where the Congress and the Left still enjoy considerable support, Mamata once again said there was no INDIA partnership in Bengal.

“There is no INDIA in the state…. On a national level, we will support them. But here, it is just us fighting against the BJP,” said the chief minister, who had pulled the plug on the bloc, dismayed with INDIA partner Congress’s inordinate delay in sealing the seat-sharing deal, and the Left’s resistance to any understanding with her.

“The CPM and the Congress are in an alliance here, which will end up helping the BJP. I request the people to vote only for Trinamool Congress and none other,” she added.