CPI-M party workers would resist if Assam NRC (National Register of Citizens)-like detention camps come up in Bengal, CPI-M state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said. He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah are not following Constitution of the country neither they are serving people with legal means. “Mr Modi and Mr Shah should know that this is West Bengal, so don’t try to endanger people of Bengal by setting up any Assam like detention camp in the name of detecting illegal immigrants. Our party workers will demolish them,” he said.

The state of Assam is intended for at least 3,000 detainees across a river in a remote part of Northeast, for the first mass detention centre for illegal immigrants. “TMC should not help BJP to lit fire in the state. We are awake and watching the activities of both the parties here,” he said. Mishra said that the BJP wanted to extend NRC all over the country and particularly in states where elections are scheduled. “NRC is being used as an issue to stoke communal passions to divide people and consolidate the Hindutva vote bank. They are destroying the secular fabric of our country by breaking people’s unity,” he said.

He asked the CPI-M and Left Front workers to stand beside people, visit their residences and convince them that Left unity would resist any attempt to build detention camp in West Bengal by any means. Two days ago CPI-M national general secretary Sitaram Yechury, while addressing a Press conference at the end of the two-day state committee meeting of the party in the city, said that the National Population Register (NPR) is going to be the basis of the launch of NRC across the country. Without naming the BJP, Yechury said, “Now they (BJP) have started the National Population Register. It was going on earlier, but was discontinued after Aadhaar was universalised.

The NPR is going to be the basis for the launch of NRC nationwide.” Regarding his party’s stand on NRC, he said, “Our party’s stand on this is very clear. NRC was part of the Assam Accord and it is, therefore, relevant in Assam. It is completely extraneous to any other state in the country. Therefore, it cannot be extended beyond Assam.” He also alleged that there is complete constitutional breakdown in the country. “The erosion of the Constitution is necessary for the RSS to convert secular democratic India to a Hindu Rashtra,” he said.