Chief minister Mamata Banerjee once again assured that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) will not be allowed in Bengal as long as the Trinamul Congress is in power. She said NRC and CAB are both two sides of the same coin. Miss Banerjee was speaking at a time when the CAB was being placed in the Lok Sabha for discussion and it was being passed.

The leaders of the Opposition parties were vehemently opposing the move both inside and outside the Parliament. “There is no need to worry about NRC and CAB. We will never ever allow it in Bengal. They can’t just throw out a legal citizen of this country or turn him/her a refugee,” Miss Banerjee said while addressing a victory rally at Kharagpur, where her party won the recent Assembly by-polls for the first time by defeating the BJP candidate.

Coming down heavily on the Centre, Miss Banerjee said, “Don’t divide the people. Don’t divide the country. You first provide food, clothes and houses to the people. We all have some document to prove that we are citizens of India. Someone cannot just come and question our citizenship status”. “We have seen how 1.9 million Hindus got excluded from NRC in Assam. We will not allow that here,” she said.

Stressing on development issues rather than putting focus on religious issues, Miss Banerjee said, “I can feel proud that our state, Bengal has topped among the states in the country in regards to the issue of poverty alleviation programme. We have lowered unemployment by 40 percent in Bengal while at the same time; the unemployment has increased by 40 percent in the country”.

“Our government has done a lot of development projects for the sake of people. I have asked the district magistrate to pursue the process so that farmers can get mutation of their agricultural lands. We have relieved the farmers from giving taxes of their agricultural lands. Our government bears the cost to the tune Rs 700 crores per year for crop insurance. So, every farmers should put their names in the crop insurance scheme. This apart, farmers should entitle their names in the Krishak Bandhu scheme,” the chief minister Miss Banerjee said.

She also said that her government has already given pattas to more than one lakh people in the junglemahal who had no rights on their lands. While highlighting her government’s initiative, Miss Banerjee said she has allotted Rs 5 crore for the construction of gallery and a club room of the Kharagpur stadium.

She also said that she has allotted Rs 5 crore for building a community development centre in Kharagpur. Miss Banerjee today laid foundation stones of a slew of development projects and handed over different aides and facilities to around seven thousands beneficiaries.