On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Assam, and in Sivasagar, distributed land allotment certificates to the indigenous people of the state who for decades have been deprived of land ownership rights. The Prime Minister handed out land ‘pattas’ to over 1.06 lakh indigenous landless families. The move comes as the state of Assam gears up for the assembly polls in April-May this year, in which the BJP fights it out against a Congress-AIUDF alliance. On Saturday too, the Prime Minister invoked his “double-engine government” rhetoric, saying that BJP governments both at the Centre and in Assam had made the tremendous development of Assam possible.
PM Modi remarked how when the BJP government took over in 2016, there were close to 6 lakh landless people in Assam, out of which 2.25 lakh landless people have received land pattas already. With Saturday’s mega function granting land pattas to another 1.06 lakh families – the BJP government of the state has covered over 50 per cent of the original landless families, by granting them land rights. Work is now on to grant the remaining families with land pattas as soon as possible.
While the BJP government of Assam is granting land rights and allotment certificates to indigenous tribal families who were deprived of the same for decades, less than two years ago in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee launched no less than an entire campaign to give land-holding rights to illegal Muslim refugees from Bangladesh. The move was aimed at consolidating the TMC’s hold over the illegal refugee voter bank, who have for inexplicable reasons got hold of voting rights in India.
In November 2019, Mamata Banerjee had announced that her government will work to regularise all refugee settlements on (state, Central or even privately-owned) land measuring up to three acres — a contentious topic in Bengal. She said refugees living in these colonies will now have rights over their land which until now was categorised as “adverse possession”.
Effectively, this meant that Mamata Banerjee was not only working to give illegal infiltrators land from the state’s share but was also illegally trying to turn usurped Central and private lands into the property of refugees squatting over them. Obviously, if Banerjee would be the messiah, giving land rights to illegal infiltrators, it does not require a supernatural genius to realise where the votes of such benefactors would be going.
While the BJP is working tirelessly to ensure that the indigenous people of Assam can avail their rightful land in the state, the TMC government of Bengal has historically always worked to woo illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators, only to score political brownie points. At a time, when BJP in Assam is purely working for the benefit of those who have always deserved land ownership rights in the state but have remained deprived of the same; it is prudent to recall TMC’s shameless pandering to illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators. This, meanwhile, is causing a massive Hindu vote consolidation in West Bengal in the favour of BJP.