The Assam BJP on Saturday said they do not trust the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC), specifically prepared for Assam, and appealed to the central and the state governments to prepare such a nationwide exercise.
At a news conference here, BJP Assam president Ranjeet Kumar Dass said the final NRC contains a very small figure of exclusions compared to officially stated figures earlier. 'We do not trust this NRC.... We are very unhappy.... We appeal to the central and the state governments to prepare a national level NRC,' he said.
Dass said the party will keep a close watch on the appeal before the foreigners' tribunals by the excluded persons and the judgments in their cases. 'If we see that FTs are delivering adverse judgements on the appeals by genuine Indian citizens, we will not wait for the entire 19 lakh cases to be disposed off. We will bring in legislation and make an act to protect them,' he asserted.
The final NRC was published today and the citizenship of 19.06 lakh persons residing in Assam is now undecided.
A total of 3.11 crore names were included out of 3.30 crore applicants.
No sooner than the NRC was announced, BJP leaders asked for a similar exercise in their states, while their counterparts in Assam fumed at the outcome.
In Telangana, Delhi and Bengal, party leaders wanted to weed out illegal migrants.
Speaking to the news agency ANI, Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari said that the NRC is needed in Delhi as the situation is “becoming dangerous” because of “illegal migrants”.
Tiwari is a frontrunner in the race for chief minister from the BJP.
According to the list released on Saturday, over 19 lakh people have been excluded from the NRC. As of now, their status of citizenship remains undecided, but they will have the option to appeal to a foreign tribunal, which is a quasi-judicial body.
T. Raja Singh, another BJP leader, raised the demand for NRC in Telangana, claiming that the state had many “Bangladeshis and Rohingya”.
“I request HMOIndia again. NRC should be implemented in Telangana as well. Hyderabad Parliamentarian has given shelter to many Bangladeshi & Rohingyas for his vote bank. It should be implemented from September 17th Hyderabad liberation day @AmitShah @narendramodi,” Singh, an MLA in the Telangana Assembly, tweeted.
Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh demanded implementation of the NRC in the state to drive out Muslims from Bangladesh for the sake of internal security.
Ghosh accused the Trinamul government of aiding Bangladeshi infiltration in the border areas of Bengal to secure minority votes 'We demand that just like Assam, the NRC should also be implemented in Bengal. If the TMC government is not willing to bite the bullet, we (the BJP) will implement it and drive out Bangladeshi Muslims from the state after we come to power in 2021,' he told reporters.
The BJP, he said, was committed to protecting the interest of Hindu refugees through the Citizenship Amendment Bill.
About 3.28 crore people living in Assam had applied for the NRC, of which 3.11 crore have been declared be Indian citizens.
Hyderabad politician Asaduddin Owaisi called the NRC a farce and challenged home minister Amit Shah to explain his claim of there being 40 lakh illegal migrants in Assam.
“The myth of the illegal migrant is dispelled with the #NRCFinalList. Will @AmitShah now explain how he came to know of 40 lakh ghuspethi? What of the fear mongering of some districts becoming Muslim majority?” the All India Majlis e Itthadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader, said on Twitter.
