Kannan Gopinathan, the IAS officer from Kerala who resigned to protest the Narendra Modi government’s abolition of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, on Friday called the BJP’s NRC campaign not only “anti-Muslim” but also “anti-poor”.

“Any move by the government to implement the NRC across the nation should not only be seen as an anti-Muslim move, but also 100 per cent as an anti-poor drive of the BJP-led government,” Gopinathan said at a discussion on the NRC at CPI Bengal headquarters Bhupesh Bhavan. The event was organised by the All India People’s Forum.

Gopinathan urged people not to panic over document verification — such fears were rife in rural Bengal last month after rumours spread of an “NRC-like exercise” requiring “proof for citizenship”.

Gopinathan said such a rush would instead help the government arrest those with no documents.

In Siliguri, CPI leader and former JNU student union president Kanhaiya Kumar “welcomed” chief minister Mamata Banerjee to a movement against NRC. “If Mamata Didi’s government wants to work on the issue, we will welcome her,” Kanhaiya said at an event convened by the Joint Forum Against NRC.

Prosenjit Bose, one of the convenors of the forum, said a public meeting would be held in Calcutta on December 9.

Additional reporting by Bireswar Banerjee in Siliguri