A day after being detained at the Silchar airport, Trinamool Congress MLA Mahua Moitra, and MPs Mamata Thakur and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar on Friday filed police complaints against Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal. Eight Trinamool Congress leaders were detained at the airport while on their way to the city to “assess the situation” following the publication of the second draft of the National Register of Citizens.
The complaints were filed at the Airport Police Station and the Alipore Police Station in Kolkata, soon after the legislators returned to the city on Friday morning, The Times of India reported. Trinamool Congress General Secretary Partha Chatterjee said that the party will observe “Black Day” on Saturday and Sunday at every block in West Bengal, to protest against the “police atrocities” on the party’s delegation at Silchar airport.
“We were surrounded by hundreds of policemen as soon as we entered Silchar airport,” Dastidar claimed. “They wouldn’t allow us to step out of the airport. They didn’t even offer us a glass of water throughout the day, forget accommodation.” However, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said in the Rajya Sabha on Friday that the Trinamool Congress delegation’s “unruly behaviour” led to a scuffle with the police.
People with cases at Foreigners’ Tribunal will not be in final list
Meanwhile, National Register of Citizens Coordinator Prateek Hajela has said that those who have cases pending against them at the Foreigners’ Tribunal in Assam will not find a place in the final list. He said that the names of some “foreigners” have entered the second draft because they did not disclose the cases pending against them at the tribunal, PTI reported.
“We will continue to track the cases pending in the Foreigners’ Tribunal and if the tribunal declares them as foreigners, their names will not be included,” Haleja said. But he added that the names of all Indians would find a place in the final list.
The NRC coordinator said that three kinds of discrepancies have been discovered in the second draft – wrong exclusion, for which claims can be filed, wrong inclusion, for which objections can be filed, and misspelt names and wrong addresses. “The NRC has been a mammoth exercise and the first draft cannot be perfect but we are committed to ensure an error-free final list,” the state coordinator added.
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