Bengal: Bangladeshi settlers under focus after 3 suicides during SIR

Kolkata: The row between Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress and opposition Bharatiya Janata Party over the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral roll has intensified after three suicides since October 27 as the victims were all Hindus from Bangladesh.

“Hindu refugees have no reason to be afraid of the SIR. They can apply for citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). We are holding camps to help them,” BJP leader and Union minister of state Shantanu Thakur, a leader of the Dalit Matua community originating from Bangladesh, said. The three victims, however, were not Matuas.

Continuing with its claim that the SIR will detect at least 10 million Muslim Bangladeshi infiltrators enjoying voting rights in Bengal, the BJP has focused on the CAA which the Centre enforced on March 11, 2024 and launched an online portal for application, West Bengal chief minister and TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee said a day later that anybody applying for citizenship would voluntarily declare himself/herself an illegal immigrant and automatically lose citizenship rights, properties and jobs.

The CAA offers expedited citizenship to non-Muslims who entered India from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh before 2015 to escape religious persecution. TMC claims it is unconstitutional to link citizenship to faith in a secular nation.

Mamata Banerjee targeted the Centre on October 28 when a 57-year-old man, who had migrated a few decades ago according his neighbours, died by suicide in North 24 Parganas district’s Agarpara, leaving a note holding the National Register of Citizens (NRC) responsible.

“The Centre’s real intention is to enforce the NRC in Bengal during the SIR. We will oppose it,” Banerjee said after the incident. She will be heading a TMC rally in Kolkata on November 4 against the SIR which TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has called “silent invisible rigging.”

The row has intensified after a 95-year-old resident of Ilambazar in Birbhum district died by suicide on October 30. His granddaughter claimed that he came from Bangladesh 30 years ago and was worried as his name did not exist in the 2002 electoral roll, the yardstick for the current scrutiny.

Questions were raised again on October 30 when a third person, this time a woman, died by suicide in North 24 Parganas district’s Titagarh. The 32-year-old Bangladeshi migrated and married to a local resident in 2010.

“A case of unnatural death was registered. She set herself on fire on the roof of her husband’s home before pasting a note on a door stating that she was agonised for not being allowed to visit her family in Dhaka for years. She held no one responsible for her death,” a police officer said, requesting anonymity.

Although no political party said a word on this incident, the victim’s mother-in-law claimed before the media that fear over SIR drove her to take the extreme step.

The row continued on Sunday over the death of a Hindu migrant worker in Chennai. The resident of Nabagram village in East Burdwan district was working in a field in the southern state before being rushed to hospital with symptoms of a heart attack, police said.

“This man was not from Bangladesh but he has been extremely tense ever since the SIR was announced,” Rabindranath Chatterjee, the local TMC MLA, told HT.

In a counter move, Bengal BJP unit’s former President and Union minister of state Sukanata Majumdar alleged on Sunday that the state administration was protecting Muslim infiltrators.

“Despite repeated complaints and providing evidence against two infiltrators living in Cooch Behar district no action has been taken by the administration as these people are Banerjee’s vote bank,” Majumdar wrote on X.

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