Thought of to be one of many key planks of the Bharatiya Janata Occasion’s (BJP) Lok Sabha election marketing campaign in West Bengal, the Citizenship (Modification) Act (CAA) didn’t be the gang pleaser that the celebration had thought it to be within the seats dominated by refugee communities just like the Matuas.
The BJP’s seat share in Bengal was decreased to 12 because the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) bagged 29 Lok Sabha seats after a seven-phase election that ended on June 1. The quantity is a pointy drop when in comparison with the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when the BJP had received from 18 constituencies. The BJP registered its highest ever tally within the state that yr with the promise of implementation of CAA.
Of the six Matua-dominated seats in Bengal, the BJP retained two and misplaced one. In Cooch Behar, sitting MP and Union Minister of State Nisith Praminik misplaced to TMC candidate Jagdish Chandra Basunia.
Within the two seats that it retained — Ranaghat and Bangaon — its vote share additionally noticed a decline. In Ranaghat, sitting MP Jagannath Sarkar retained his seat by polling 50.78 per cent of the votes and defeating his nearest rival Mukutmani Adhikari, who was contesting on a TMC ticket. In 2019, he had drawn 52.78 per cent of the overall votes forged.
In Bangaon, Union Minister Santanu Thakur defeated TMC’s Biswajit Das by a margin of 73,693 votes by polling 48.19 per cent of the votes — a marginal dip from the 48.85 per cent of the votes he had polled within the earlier Lok Sabha election.
The TMC retained the remaining three Matua-dominated seats of Krishnanagar, Barasat and Bardhman Purba the place it had fielded Mahua Moitra, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Sharmila Sarkar, respectively.
The CAA seeks to fast-track the method of granting Indian citizenship to undocumented non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan who got here to India earlier than December 31, 2014.
On Could 29, the BJP-led Centre introduced that it has began granting citizenship certificates below CAA by state-level empowered committees in Bengal, Haryana and Uttarakhand. The transfer got here after the Centre notified the principles for the citizenship legislation in March, simply days earlier than the announcement of the Lok Sabha election schedule.
Matuas belong to the Scheduled Caste Namasudra neighborhood that migrated to India in giant numbers, first through the Partition, after which after the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation Warfare. The neighborhood has a presence throughout districts like North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Cooch Behar and Purba Bardhaman. There are round 1.5 crore voters from the neighborhood. Due to the circumstances below which they migrated to India, a lot of them by no means formally obtained Indian citizenship, making the implementation of CAA a longstanding demand for the neighborhood.
The ruling TMC, however, had campaigned towards the CAA, saying one must declare himself or herself as a foreigner to use for Indian citizenship.
West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee had informed voters at a rally in Krishnanagar that the CAA was a “lure”, and can be adopted by the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to weed out unlawful immigrants. “The CAA will flip authorized residents into foreigners. We’ll permit neither the CAA nor the NRC in West Bengal,” she had stated whereas campaigning within the constituency in Nadia district.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had countered her at a rally in Jadavpur constituency in Could final week and stated: “The CAA is a legislation to offer citizenship, to not snatch away the citizenship of anybody. However the TMC is spreading misinformation about it to scare their vote financial institution (implying Muslims).”
With the CAA failing to offer impetus to its marketing campaign, the BJP accused the TMC for deceptive voters about CAA and the NRC. Speaking to The Indian Express, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya stated, “The TMC misled individuals relating to CAA. It instilled a way of concern among the many neighborhood by complicated them in regards to the end result in the event that they utilized for citizenship below CAA. We couldn’t counter it. They tried to divide the neighborhood. Two of our MPs countered their divisive politics in Bangaon and Ranaghat,” stated Bhattacharya.