Bangladesh Has No Problem With NRC, Was Assured By PM Modi In New York: Sheikh Hasina

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who is on a four day visit to India on Thursday said she was satisfied with implementation of National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance her on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly that Bangladesh should not be worried about the issue. “I don’t see any problem. I had a talk with Prime Minister Modi. Everything is OK,” the Indian Express quoted Hasina as saying. Ties between India and Bangladesh have been on an upswing in the last few years.

It is Sheikh Hasina’s first visit to India since parliamentary elections were held in Bangladesh and India. Hasina is set to meet PM Modi on Saturday.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Kolkata reiterated that the government would “identify each infiltrator and drive them out”. The NRC is ‘a must’ for national security and will be implemented, Shah had recently said at Kolkata but made it clear that Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist refugees will be accorded Indian citizenship beforehand with the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment)Bill. "People of Bengal are being misled about the NRC... I assure all Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain refugees they won't have to leave the country, they will get Indian citizenship and enjoy all the rights of an Indian national," he had said.

Amit Shah also asked party workers in West Bengal to start making people aware on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.

In the complete draft of the NRC, which was published in July last year, names of 40,07,707 people were excluded. It contained names of 2,89,83,677 eligible persons out of a total 3,29,91,384 applicants. Names of additional 1,02,462 persons were included in the list of excluded persons in June this year taking the total ineligible persons to 41,10,169 in the complete draft.

Though there has been some buzz over such an exercise across the country, at present, Assam is the only state that is carrying out the NRC policy. The citizens’ register was last updated in 1951. Assam had faced influx of people from Bangladesh since the early 20th Century.

Meanwhile, even as various stakeholders debate over the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was released by the Home Ministry on August 31st, Himanta Biswa Sarma has reportedly said that the BJP-led Assam government is set to move the Supreme Court for review of the key procedures of the entire exercise.