PM To Address First Rally In Bengal After Draft Roll Release Amid SIR Concerns Of Matuas

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit West Bengal's Nadia district on Saturday, where he will inaugurate national highway projects and address a public rally, amid heightened political tensions over the ongoing SIR exercise in the state.

This would be Modi’s first visit to the state since the draft SIR rolls were published and the third in the past five months.

The Prime Minister, political observers said, is likely to address the growing unease amongst the Matua community members post the publication of the draft electoral rolls from his strategically located BJP rally venue in the Taherpur area of Ranaghat, not far from the heartland of the Namasudra Hindu community in adjacent Bongaon.

Modi is likely to sound the BJP’s bugle for assembly polls, which are due in the state early next year and chart the course of the party’s agenda for the crucial elections.

“The people of West Bengal are benefiting from numerous pro-people initiatives of the central government. At the same time, they are suffering due to the TMC’s misgovernance in every sector,” the PM posted on X on Friday evening while announcing his visit.

“The loot and intimidation of the TMC have crossed all limits. That is why, BJP is the people’s hope,” he added.

The PM’s visit comes at a time when the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has mounted sustained opposition to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, alleging that the exercise is being carried out in “haste” and that a large number of genuine voters, particularly refugee Hindus, risk disenfranchisement on its account.

In the draft electoral rolls published after the enumeration phase, 58,20,899 names have been excluded, reducing the electorate to 7.08 crore. Around 1.36 crore entries have also been flagged for "logical discrepancies", while 30 lakh voters have been categorised as unmapped – a significant percentage of whom are likely to be called for verification hearings over the next 45 days.

For Matuas, a Dalit Hindu community that migrated from Bangladesh over decades due to religious persecution, this exercise has revived anxieties over identity and documentation.

Speculations are rife that significant numbers of community members have already been excluded from draft rolls, and many more are likely to follow suit in the final rolls on account of the unavailability of the EC-specified indicative documents they need to produce in the eventuality of receiving hearing notices during the verification phase.

Over the past years, poll results have indicated that the BJP gained significant inroads among community members, promising them formal Indian citizenship.

BJP MP Jagannath Sarkar, who represents the Ranaghat Lok Sabha seat -- where Taherpur is located, claimed that fear was being spread deliberately among the Matuas about SIR.

"We are hopeful that the PM's message would dispel those fears and canards," he said.

Stating that people are “aware about which party wants to grant citizenship and which party is opposing that”, the BJP MP said that the Centre reserves the option of making further amendments to the CAA and make the process of granting citizenship easier.

“We are hoping that the eligibility deadline of entry of religiously persecuted people from neighbouring countries will be extended from 2014 as stated in the CAA to 2024. Our PM will surely look into that aspiration,” Sarkar said.

Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh, however, hit back at the saffron camp, claiming that the state has already witnessed too many “empty promises from the Prime Minister” and that Modi’s visit to the area was a mere “damage control exercise”.

“We have been listening to repeated citizenship promises for the persecuted Bengalis since 2019. Thanks to the complexities that continue to persist over the CAA, none of those promises have been fulfilled so far,” Ghosh said.

“On top of that, the SIR exercise has added salt to the wounds of the Matua community. The PM realises that major damage is done, and that’s why he is coming for this visit in the hope of making some damage control. Like in previous occasions, this time too the PM is arriving empty-handed,” he added.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already led anti-SIR rallies in Nadia and North 24 Parganas, the two adjoining districts that share a border with Bangladesh and have a significant Matua presence.

During his visit, the PM will inaugurate and lay the foundation stone for two national highway projects worth around Rs 3,200 crore.

He will inaugurate the 66.7-km-long four-laning of the Barajaguli-Krishnanagar section of NH-34 in Nadia district and lay the foundation stone for the four-laning of the 17.6-km-long Barasat–Barajaguli section in North 24 Parganas district.

The projects are expected to serve as a vital connecting link between Kolkata and Siliguri, boosting trade, tourism and economic activity across southern and northern parts of the state, officials said.