Newsroom, Sept 3: Among the 19 lakh people who have been left out of the final NRC list in Assam include many Hindu Bengali refugees too. They claim to have come to India from East Pakistan in the 60s, which is well before the NRC cut-off date of 1971. And yet, they didn't make it to the Assam NRC.
One such Hindu Bengali refugee is Shyamapada Chakravarty. He, his wife and their two daughters did not make it to the list. They came to India as a result of “atrocities in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)” and have lived in India as a Permanent Liability.
Chakravarty says that at the time of their migration, then PM Jawaharlal Nehru invited Hindus from erstwhile East Pakistan and offered them shelter. “All our documents are legitimate. We never expected that we will be considered as intruders under the regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he laments.
Another refuge, Ratna Chakravarty says that she is terrified, especially because she “doesn’t have the money to fight the case for inclusion”. The family is more worried about their children because with their names not being on the list, they believe their children’s future looks bleak.
Dino Krishno Das, another Hindu Bengali refugee, who works as a trader in the weekly market, fell sick as a result of constantly worrying about his future post the exclusion of his name the final list. “I am always thinking about the NRC.” he said.
BJP leader and Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sharma said that the party will stand by Hindu migrants and will pursue their cases so that they can later extradite the illegal ones. He further added that “technical flaws” may have caused the exclusion of Hindu Bengali refugees and that the state government would move the Supreme Court for a re-verification process.
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