Will never allow: Mamata raises NRC issue again ahead of Bengal polls

As the battle for West Bengal is getting intense ahead of West Bengal Assembly elections 2021, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said the National Register for Citizens will never be implemented in West Bengal. "They (BJP) want to instil fear among the people in the name of National Register of Citizens. I will never allow the implementation of NRC in West Bengal," the chief minister said in Alipurduar.

In Assam, where NRC was published in 2019, people whose names have been excluded from the NRC will be considered eligible for voting if their names figure on the voters' list, the Election Commission has recently said. Out of 3.3 crore people in Assam who had applied to be included in the list, 19 lakh did not find a place in the final list, which has not been notified by the Registrar General of India.

The NRC issue is going to be a poll plank ahead of the election in Bengal and Assam — both scheduled to be held in April, May. The Centre on Tuesday told Parliament that it has not taken any decision on a nationwide roll-out of the National Register of Citizens. "It has been clarified at various levels in government time and again that till now no decision has been taken to create National Register of an Indian citizen," the ministry told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs.