Assam party sees conspiracy to brand 4 million Muslims Bangladeshis

With Assembly elections due next year in the Indian state of Assam, minority vote bank politics has gathered momentum here.

All political parties in the state are busy issuing statements to their advantage on Bangladeshi citizens.



Perfume baron and chief of All India United Democratic Front, Badruddin Ajmal, has accused some government officials engaged in updating Assam's National Register of Citizens (NRC) 1951 of conspiring to stamp 4 million Muslims as Bangladeshis.



Ajmal will visit New Delhi on Apr 23 and meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Registrar General to discuss a host of apparent discrepancies in the ongoing process of updating the NRC.



He added that he would also draw 'the Supreme Court's attention' to the issue.



According to Ajmal, complaints like not having access to voters' list, discrepancy in names, and the lack of forms for the process have been surfacing.



The NRC contains the details of Indian citizens.



Immediately after Ajmal's statement, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Monday said that all those who came to Assam from Bangladesh at the time of Partition should be granted Indian citizenship, be they Hindu, Muslim or  Buddhists.



The chief minister also said the Doubtful  or ‘D’ voters tag should be removed and everyone granted Indian citizenship.

However, his statement is being viewed by political opponents as directly appealing to the minority vote bank.

After the Lok Sabha election in which the Congress suffered a humiliating defeat, Chief Minister Gogoi is believed to be eying a victory in the state election by issuing such statements.



On the other hand, Assam BJP President Siddhartha Bhattacharjya said while addressing party workers at Silchar that Hindus who came to Assam from Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan) due to religious persecution should be granted citizenship.

Reuters File Photo

Meanwhile, AASU, KMSS and AGP and several local organisations have strongly criticised Ajmal's statement, describing him as a spokesperson for the Bangladeshi people.

All Assam Student Union (AASU) Vice President Pradip Das said Ajmal's statement indicated that he and the AIUDF were against the update of the NRC.

They alleged leaders like Ajmal were giving protection to Bangladeshi citizens here and were, therefore, trying to hinder the process of NCR updating by making dubious statements.

State BJP minority front leader Dhani Ali described Ajmal's statement as unfortunate, which, according to Ali, revealed his anti-India and anti-Assam attitude.

He said a proper NRC revision in Assam would badly erode the AIUDF's vote bank, a possibility that was making Ajmal jittery.

The BJP leader has appealed to religious minorities not to be confused by Ajmal’s statements. 



Azad Ali, president of the organisation, Bagh Sena, said Ajmal was misusing the word Muslim in his statements.

In such a situation, the Muslims of Assam should use their discretion and take the right step.



Bagh Sena released a media statement saying that out of Assam's total population of 32 million, nearly 11 million were Muslims.

In 1901, Muslim population of the Brahmaputra Valley was 248,842. They were Assam's local (original) Assamese Muslims.

In 1951, Assam's Muslim population increased to 1,981,859, of which nearly 1.5 million were migrant Muslims.

They have their names enrolled in the 1951 NRC and face no problems.

Chief Minister Gogoi on Tuesday said not a single Indian citizen will be left out of the NRC, let alone 4 million Muslims.

His government was sincerely working to update the NRC, he said.



The NRC will be updated based on NRC 1951, electoral rolls up to the midnight of March 24, 1971 and in their absence, the list of admissible documents of the pre-1971 period.



The Supreme Court had last year asked the Assam government to work out the logistics for updating the NRC by January 2016.