Silchar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off his campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Assam from Silchar on Friday by assuring that no genuine Indian citizen will be left out of the National Register of Citizens process.
“I want to assure you that none of you who is a citizen will be left out. I know you've faced problems, but the programme which was stuck from decades will finally reach its conclusion,” he said.
The NRC, which seeks to identify and deport illegal Bangladeshi migrants from the state, has become a tool for a political war between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition as the saffron party has looked to build the narrative that it was ousting “infiltrators”.
Several of the party leaders have called for similar process being carried out in other states as well. Around 40 lakh names were left out from the draft list that was released in July last year, and the process for filing objections for inclusion had wrapped up on December 31, 2018.
The opposition, led by Mamata Banerjee, has accused the BJP government of excluding minorities who are unlikely to vote for the party in the upcoming general election.
Rejecting all allegations of targeted exclusion, the Prime Minister assured voters that no Indian citizen will be left out (Aapko fir se bharosa deta hoon koi bhi bharatiya nagrik National Register of Citizens mein se nahi chootega), he said in Barak Valley on Friday.
Modi’s rally was part of the first phase of the election campaign and his second visit to Assam in a span of just 10 days. The prime minister had inaugurated the country's longest rail-cum-road bridge, Bogibeel bridge, on Christmas.
During his day-long visit to the Northeast, Modi first visited Manipur, where he inaugurated and lay foundation stone of various projects at a rally.
The BJP and its allies have set a target to win 21 out of the 25 parliamentary seats in eight states in the region. In Assam, they hope to win at least 11 of the 14 seats.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the saffron party had made massive inroads in Assam, winning seven seats. In the 2016 Assembly election, it emerged as the single-largest party with 61 seats.
The BJP had also emerged as the winner in the Assam panchayat polls last month, bagging 42 per cent of the total seats.
The Congress won the second-highest number of seats, accounting for 34 per cent of them, while regional party Asom Gana Parishad finished fourth, behind Independents who bagged 11 per cent of the seats.
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