West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerji says she raised the Assam NRC in her discussions with Home Minister Amit Shah in the national capital on Thursday.
She had met Prime Minister Natendra Modi on Wednesday with her demand for a change of name for her state.
This is the first time Mamata Banerjee is meeting Amit Shah after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections after he took over as the Home Minister in the second Modi government.
Coming out of the meeting, Mamata Banerjee told reporters, “I raised the issue of Assam NRC with the Home Minister and handed him a letter. I spoke to him about the exclusion of 19 lakh people out of the Assam NRC, some of who are Hindi, Bengali and Gorkha-speaking people and genuine Indian voters.”
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She said “genuine Indian voters cannot be excluded” from the NRC in Assam.
Asked about extending the NRC process to West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee ruled out the speculation and said that this was not discussed in the brief meeting with Amit Shah.
“He didn’t speak about NRC in West Bengal. There is no need for NRC there,” said Mamata Banerjee.
She said in Assam, the promise to update the NRC was written into the Assam accord and then accepted and supervised by the Supreme Court.
“But there is no need for and any logic behind extending the NRC to rest of India including West Bengal,” Mamata said.
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On Wednesday, she met PM Modi and discussed a host of issues, including the proposal to change West Bengal’s name to Bangla.
Mamata Banerjee and Amit Shah have been at loggerheads for long with the two party chiefs attacking each other on numerous occasions.
Ahead of Thursday’s meeting, Amit Shah proposed on Wednesday that there is need for a nationwide NRC like that in Assam to throw all illegal immigrants out of the country.
Mamata Banerjee, on the other hand, has issued repeated warnings to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Modi government over any such actions on West Bengal.
Bengal BJP has termed her Delhi visit and meetings with PM Modi and Amit Shah as her last ditch attempt to “save herself”.
Several Trinamool Congress leaders and former Kolkata police chief Rajeev Kumar have come under the CBI scanner in connection with a ponzi scam related to the Saradha group.
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The Saradha group of companies allegedly duped lakhs of people of Rs 2,500 crore, promising higher rates of return on their investments.
Asked if her meeting with Amit Shah had anything to do with Rajeev Kumar, Mamata Banerjee shot back and said it “is political vendetta”.
Bengal’s next assembly poll is due in April-May 2021.
