Mamata slams Assam CM over NRC Bengal notices

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took her reproval of her Assam counterpart, Himanta Biswa Sarma, a notch higher on Monday by questioning the latter’s authority in sending NRC notices to bona fide citizens of Bengal, and demanded he stop meddling in matters that are beyond his jurisdiction.

Ensuring that her accusations against the BJP’s policies elsewhere in the country had a concrete face, the Trinamool Congress supremo presented Uttam Kumar Brajabashi before lakhs of TMC supporters at the Martyrs’ Day rally here to drive her point.

Brajabashi, a resident of Cooch Behar in the northern part of West Bengal, received an NRC notice from the Assam government sometime back, asking him to prove his Indian citizenship or face deportation.

“Look at this man who has lived in Cooch Behar for the last 50 years,” said Banerjee, holding Brajabashi, a Rajbanshi community member from Dinhata, by his hands in the air.

“The Assam government, in all its arrogance, has sent him an NRC notice. Tell me, my Rajbanshi brothers, what right does it have? We ask the BJP government, under what authority has it done this? We need answers right away,” she said.

Making her frontal attack on Sarma, albeit without directly naming him, Banerjee pledged political backlashes in Assam if the persecutions did not stop.

“The Assam chief minister can’t mind his own state and he dares to interfere in Bengal. Stop this interference immediately, or I will ask Sushmita Deb and others to build up resistance in that state. We will all go from here and see how many of us they can hold in their detention camps,” the CM said.

Sushmita Deb, a TMC leader from Assam, is a Rajya Sabha MP.

Earlier this month, Brajabashi claimed he produced documents which showed that his parents were voters in Dinhata. He maintained throughout that he was born in Cooch Behar and never travelled outside Bengal, irrespective of the Assam government accusing him of being an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh.

A war of words between the two chief ministers broke out last week after Banerjee called the Assam government's actions “a divisive agenda of the BJP” targeting citizens speaking Bangla, and Sarma responded that he was “fearlessly resisting the ongoing, unchecked Muslim infiltration from across the border.”