‘ABOUT 20K INFILTRATORS ARRESTED IN 10 YEARS...’ Centre’s data debunks Bengal BJP’s ‘1 crore infiltrator’ claim

KOLKATA: What Bengal BJP leaders, particularly Suvendu Adhikari, have been claiming for months—that the state is home to one crore “Rohingyas” and Bangladeshi infiltrators—has once again been contradicted by the BJP-led government at the Centre. Political analysts said this dealt another blow to Adhikari’s assertions, exposing his claims as exaggerated. While BJP leaders had projected Bengal as teeming with hidden foreigners, the Ministry of External Affairs informed Parliament that over the past ten years, across the entire country, only 18,851 India–Bangladesh infiltrators and 1,165 India–Myanmar infiltrators were arrested. Bengal’s draft electoral rolls published under the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) have also contradicted Adhikari’s claims, showing no numerical basis for the allegation that the state hosts one crore Rohingyas and Bangladeshis. The ECI’s categorisation revealed that the number of ‘fake’ voters falls far short of the BJP leader’s repeated assertions.

Statewide, 58,20,898 names have been excluded from the draft electoral rolls under SIR, reducing Bengal’s electorate from 7.66 crore to 7.08 crore. ECI data also show around 1.36 crore entries flagged for logical discrepancies and nearly 30 lakh voters categorised as unmapped, taking the number of voters who may be called for hearings to about 1.66 crore. Matua leaders across party lines claimed a significant share of these voters belong to the community. Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP and Matua leader Mamatabala Thakur alleged that under the pretext of identifying “infiltrators”, the Centre has stripped the Matua community of its voting rights. Incidentally, over 86,175 Matua voters were removed from draft rolls in four Assembly constituencies under the Bongaon subdivision. The BJP-linked faction of the Matua Mahasangha, led by BJP MP Shantanu Thakur, was accused of issuing religious eligibility certificates for Rs 100 in exchange for assurances of citizenship under the CAA—an act Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had termed a “big fraud” that could lead to genuine voters being delisted.