Lok Sabha polls 2024: In Assam, citizenship quandary biggest poll issue

Over 96,000 voters in Assam are disenfranchised after being dubbed “doubtful voters”. Since 2019, the biometric data of another 27 lakh people has been frozen, depriving them of the Aadhar card and related benefits.

According to Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), as of March 2024, the state had another 203 people lodged in a detention camp.

Hindus, Muslims

Almost all of these people battling the citizenship quandary are Bengali-speaking -- Hindus and Muslims alike.

Viewed as an identity issue of Assam’s Bengali community that constitutes 28.92 per cent of the state’s 3.12 crore population, as per the last 2011 census, the plight of these people has become a major election plank this time too as in every election in the recent past.

Religious polarisation

Strangely, the common citizenship factor far from being a unifier has polarised the community on religious lines. Nowhere the cleavage perhaps is starker as it is in two parliamentary constituencies of Barak Valley, the Bengali heartland of Assam.

Silchar and Karimganj seats will be voting on April 26.

Silchar, Karimganj

The contest in the SC-reserved Silchar seat will be mainly between Parimal Suklabaidya of the ruling BJP and Suriya Kanta Sarkar of the Congress. Radheshyam Biswas of the All-India Trinamool Congress too is in the fray.

Karimganj seat is set for a triangular contest among outgoing BJP MP Kripanath Malla, Hafiz Ahmed Rashid Choudhury of the Congress and Sahabul Islam Choudhury of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF).

Identity issue

Barak is one of Assam’s most underdeveloped regions, constrained by poor infrastructure and lack of employment avenues.

Overriding all other issues, citizenship/identity dominates the political narratives in the two overwhelming Bengali-dominated seats. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, while campaigning in the Barak Valley, promised to provide citizenship and resolve the issue of "doubtful (D)-voters" of Hindu-Bengali within six months after the Lok Sabha elections.

D-voters is a unique Assam-specific classification used to denote those electorates who could not provide evidence to substantiate their nationality.

The concept was introduced by the Election Commission in 1997.

Modi’s pledge

Before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Narendra Modi promised that the issue would be resolved if the BJP was voted to power. But nothing has changed for the state’s 96,987 D-voters. Most of them are Bengali Hindus.

The identity issue further compounded during the BJP regime as many Bengalis found themselves lodged in the detention camp on suspicion of being illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Lakhs of Bengalis' biometric data locked during the NRC upgradation process have yet to be unlocked despite repeated assurances from the state government.

Despite sharing common woes, Hindus and Muslims view them through different political prisms.

While Hindus, by and large, repose faith in the BJP for a solution to their problem, the Muslims have a different take.

BJP attacked

“The BJP is misleading Bengalis through false promises and divisive politics. The promise of granting citizenship to migrant Bengali Hindus through Citizenship Amendment Act is nothing but a ploy to divide the community on religious lines,” said Fazluzzaman Mazumder, a practising lawyer and a voter in Karimganj.

Those who would acquire citizenship by declaring themselves illegal migrants under the CAA rules run the risk of being branded as “back-door citizens”, he said.

Detention camp

“If the BJP is sincere in protecting the interest of Hindu Bengalis, so many people from the community would not have languished in a detention camp, tagged as D voters or deprived of Aadhaar cards. Bengali Hindus and Muslims have equally suffered under the BJP regime,” Mazumder alleged.

Stereotyping of Bengali Muslims as illegal Bangladeshi migrants has increased ever since the BJP came to power, he claimed.

CAA blues

Sarkar, the Congress candidate from Silchar, also claims that whoever applies for the citizenship under the CAA rules will be established as a Bangladeshi.

“So far only one person in the Barak Valley has applied for citizenship under the new law. The people have realised that they have been betrayed,” Sarkar alleges.

Hindu viewpoint

Not many Hindu Bengalis in Barak are willing to buy the contention.

“There is no denying that quite a large number of Hindu Bengalis are uncertain about their citizenship status. But for that BJP is not to be blamed,” said Samar Dar, a government servant from Karimganj’s Ramkrishna Nagar.

Incidentally, the biometric data of his wife Jyoti Das is locked and she is deprived of Aadhaar card and related facilities.

Defending Modi

“We are the victims of the partition of India. In the past 70 years, no party ever tried to address our problems. The BJP is at least sympathetic to Bengali Hindus,” he said over telephone.

When reminded that Modi had failed to keep his promise made 10 years ago to resolve the issue of D voters, Das argued that he needed more time.

“The BJP has succeeded in creating a loyal vote base among the Bengali Hindus of Assam by injecting its Hindutva ideology,” said Sajal Nag, a social scientist who had a long stint with the Silchar-based Assam University as professor.

Advantage BJP

This blind faith in the BJP is giving the party an edge in the Hindu-majority Silchar seat and some hope in Muslim-dominated Karimganj as well. Unless there is a major upset, the lotus will once again bloom in Silchar.

In Karimganj, the saffron camp is anticipating a split in minority votes between the Congress and the AIUDF and consolidation of Hindu votes in its favour.