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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in West Bengal on Saturday. The PM will be addressing the public at the same place Taherpur ground in Nadia, where 6 years back he had promised that his government will pass the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), and pave the way for permanent citizenship for refugees. He kept his promise and implemented the CAA.
PM Narendra Modi's rally in Nadia becomes all the more important, because this area is home to a large number of Bangladeshi refugees. Currently the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of political rolls is underway in West Bengal. Through this process, the names of the ineligible voters are to be removed from the list. As discussions around this topic intensifies, there is repeated mention of removing the names of Bangladeshi infiltrators from the voters list.
PM Modi's visit to Bengal comes in the midst of the SIR process and at a time when discussions around citizenship and infiltration by Bangladeshis is in full swing in the state. The PM is scheduled to hold an administrative meeting and a public rally in Taherpur in the Matua-dominated Ranaghat Lok Sabha constituency.
The Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari will also be present on this occasion. Political analysts are closely watching the rally of the PM in West Bengal. They are eager to know what message he will give to the voters in the Ranaghat-Bangaon area and also the rest of West Bengal. He is also set to lay the foundation stone of 2 national highway projects.
West Bengal is scheduled to see Assembly Elections next year and the BJP has already started preparations for the same.
The PM's programme is being held at the Netaji Park ground in Taherpur. He will land in Kolkata at around 10:30 am, from where he will leave for Taherpur, at around 10:45 am in a helicopter. He will land at the cremation ground helipad next to Taherpur police station at 11:05 am.
The PM will reach the meeting ground that is the Netaji Park Grounds at 11:15 am. The administrative meeting is expected to last around half an hour.
PM Modi will inaugurate and lay the foundation stone of national highway projects worth more than Rs 3,000 crore.The work of converting about 68 km stretch of National Highway No. 12 from Krishnanagar to Barajguli into four lanes has been completed. The PM will formally inaugurate it on Saturday. Along with this, he will lay the foundation stone for converting about 18 km stretch from Barasat to Barajguli into four lanes.
The public rally of the PM is scheduled between 12 pm to 12:45 pm. The speech that he will make here is closely awaited, especially by political experts. This is so because, this is the first visit of the leader to West Bengal, post the SIR exercise here. He is holding his first meeting in a place which is considered a refugee or Matua-dominated area, that too at a time when the SIR exercise is ongoing and there are concerns among many, regarding whether their names are on the voters list in the state, or has it been deleted.
The area where the PM is holding his public meeting on Saturday is very close to Phulia and Shantipur, two of the strongholds of the people of the weavers community. So the PM may also have a special message for the weavers of the state.
The PM has spoken a lot about the pride of Bengalis in his recent public meetings in the state. Since this public meeting is in Nadia, the PM may speak about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu from the stage in Taherpur.
The Matua community has played a significant role in the politics of West Bengal. They are a politically significant community in the state. In fact the Matuas are the second-largest Scheduled Caste group here.
Their influence is spread across at least 50 Assembly seats in the state, thus making their votes crucial for any political outcome. The Matua community is a significant Scheduled Caste group of Hindu refugees from Bangladesh.
Before and after the partition of the country and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, many people migrated from Bangladesh to West Bengal and settled in the areas of Nadia, North 24 Parganas and North Bengal. But there have been continuous questions around the citizenship of this particular community. But CAA helped them get Indian citizenship.
PM Modi had promised them citizenship and his government fulfilled it through CAA. Shantanu Thakur, a prominent Matua community leader, is a BJP MP, and the BJP had a significant advantage in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in this region.
