Video Producer: Debayan Dutta
Video Editor: Ashutosh Bhardwaj
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been one of the most fiesty voices against the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) in Assam – the first draft of which excluded almost 40 lakh people, essentially making them stateless. Many, if not most, of those excluded from the list were Bengalis.
On the other hand, Kailash Vijayvargiya, the General Secretary of the BJP, has warned that Bengal may be the next state to conduct an exercise like the NRC.
Clearly, what is a complex, historic issue in Assam has become a topic of major politicking in Bengal. But is this political posturing by both parties cutting ice with residents of the state?
We went across Kolkata and spoke to a cross-section of people on whether the NRC affects them, if Mamata is playing on Bengali chauvinism and if an NRC in Bengal will be accepted by the people at all.