Banks, postal dept being used to conduct NRC surveys, alleges Mamata

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday alleged that different banks and the postal department are involved in conducting surveys on behalf of the union government and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre. The chief minister asked people not to share any document or information with those surveyors.

“Banks and the postal department are being used for collecting data. Don’t answer them. Share no information or document. They can’t do it without the approval of the state government and we haven’t given them any permission. Send these people away from your home,” Banerjee said while convening an administrative meeting in Bankura district. The meeting was streamed live on social media.

After the meeting, she went to the neighbouring West Burdwan district and led a rally against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR) in Durgapur.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state unit president Dilip Ghosh criticized Banerjee following this remark and alleged that the chief minister herself was creating a state of chaos, leading to disruption of regular work in the banking sector.

“How can a chief minister ask people not to share information with banks? She is harming basic financial activities and also misleading the people. Only those refusing to share information with the banks would suffer, as the banks have nothing at all to do with NRC or NPR,” said Ghosh, a Lok Sabha MP from Midnapore. On Wednesday, he led a rally supporting CAA in north Bengal.

“They are even opposing bank’s KYC (know your customer) forms. Do they want to paralyze the banking system?” Ghosh questioned.

The chief minister had earlier cautioned people against sharing personal information with workers of non-government organizations (NGOs), alleging that the BJP had employed NGOs to secretly collect information for NPR and NRC.

The stage government has already halted all work related to NPR and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation has stopped updating Aadhar card information.

Owing to a state of panic over the citizenship screening exercise in different districts of the state, the preparations for the house-listing phase of census, scheduled to be held between April and September this year across the country, has also been hit.

In an unrelated development, the police in Siliguri in north Bengal used water cannons to disperse agitators belonging to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s youth wing who were protesting different policies of the state government and the Centre on Wednesday afternoon.