‘The community, which voted for BJP in last two Bengal polls, may think otherwise in upcoming Panchayat elections and even during 2024 Lok Sabha polls’.
NEW DELHI: As the Panchayat election in West Bengal is drawing near, the Matua community in West Bengal is growing restless over the promise of grant of citizenship to the community by the BJP-led government at the Centre. Several Matua leaders from West Bengal have started to raise apprehensions over the 2019 promise made by the BJP which said that by all means, the Matua community would be granted citizenship of India.
Several members of the community that this correspondent spoke to have said that it has been about two years since the Central government had passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the Parliament, but despite that, the government has not been able to frame rules till now, giving rise to doubts over the intentions of the government on when something concrete would be done to ensure that they do not live like refugees in the country.
“Almost the entire community voted en masse for the BJP in the last two elections held in Bengal, because the Matuas trusted that the BJP would give them their dues that were denied to them for several decades. But then, when it’s almost two years since the CAA was passed and nothing is being done, doubts for obvious reasons are being raised by the community leaders and members alike on the intentions of the Central government,” Malay Das, a senior member of the Matua community, told The Sunday Guardian over telephone from West Bengal.
Another Matua leader from Bengal’s Nadia district told The Sunday Guardian that the community is losing hope as the BJP government is silent on the citizenship status of the Matua community in Bengal and that the community might think otherwise when it comes to votes in the upcoming Panchayat elections and even during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
“The Matua community in Bengal still has hope that the BJP would give them Indian citizen status, but as time is running out and elections in West Bengal are nearing, the community is running out of patience. If the rules are not framed before the 2024 elections, the BJP would lose out a huge chunk of voters from Bengal,” the Matua leader said.
Mukutmani Adhikari, BJP’s Ranaghat MLA, said that he is hopeful that the BJP would frame rules for the grant of citizenship to this deprived community of Bengal. Asim Sarkar, another BJP MLA and a member of the Matua community, said that unlike in 2019 when the Matuas supported the BJP wholeheartedly, this time (Panchayat elections) and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections might not see a similar support from the community if the BJP government does not grant citizenship to the Matuas before the 2024 elections.
The Matua community had formed a huge chunk of vote bank for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and also in the 2021 Vidhan Sabha polls as the BJP had promised that the party would be granting them permanent citizenship in India soon.
To this, the BJP government at the Centre had also passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill in 2019, soon after coming to power, that empowered the central government to grant citizenship to all persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who have migrated to India before 2014 from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. However, the rules for the grant of citizenship to these persecuted communities have still not been framed by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Ministry of Home Affairs had said that the delay had been due to the Covid-19 pandemic that not only raged in India, but also in the world.
However, Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal and her Trinamool Congress, is vehemently opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act and had on multiple occasions said that this Act was not necessary as the Matuas were already citizens of India and this is just a “political gimmick” of the BJP to draw Matua votes towards their party.
The TMC has said that since the Matuas over the years have got their voter ID card and their Aadhaar card, they are deemed as citizens of India since they vote in India, but, on the contrary, the Matuas say that they still need permanent citizenship identity in India, since the 1955 Citizenship Rule legally does not make them Indian citizens.
However, while addressing reporters on Friday, BJP’s West Bengal President, Sukanta Mazumdar, said that the BJP is committed towards granting citizenship to the Matua community and that he is assuring all the members of the community that before 2024, they will be granted citizenship.
The Matuas, who are Hindus, are primarily a community of Scheduled Caste who had come to India from the erstwhile East Pakistan—now Bangladesh—during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. The Matuas had earlier been a loyal vote bank of the CPM in Bengal and during the 2011 Assembly elections, they shifted their loyalty to the TMC. But ever since the BJP announced that the Citizenship Amendment Bill would be passed in Parliament and the CAA would provide permanent citizenship of India to the community—which had been their long-standing demand—they shifted their loyalty to the BJP.