Bengal's Rajbangshi community welcomes SIR, keeping land concerns over political alignments

New Delhi, Nov 7 (IANS) In West Bengal, even as political narratives around the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral roll spread panic, leading to alleged deaths by suicide, the state's largest group of Scheduled Caste (SC) welcomed the process saying it will identify "outsiders" they claim are squatting on their lands.

The Rajbangshi, at over 18 per cent, forms West Bengal’s largest SC group, with a population estimated around half-a-crore spread across Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Malda, and Murshidabad districts.

"We support the SIR process; it’ll help identify bogus voters, those deceased, people who have migrated, among others," said leader of one faction of the Greater Cooch Behar Peoples’ Association (GCPA), Bangshibadan Barman.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Barman supported the Trinamool Congress candidate in the Coochbehar Lok Sabha seat where he exhorted his followers to support Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her party, claiming that the Trinamool Congress chief has done a lot for the Rajbangshi community.

However, such political alignments did not drive him to go along with Trinamool Congress' strong resistance to SIR. It was the community's concerns over "outsiders" taking over their land that still remain the main focus.

The GCPA has been demanding a separate state for the Rajbangshis, which includes seven districts of North Bengal in addition to three in Assam. Barman's faction is considered most prominent among other groups demanding a statehood in the region, and enjoys considerable support among the local people.

West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress as well as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been wooing the Rajbangshi, where, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the state’s principal Opposition party had swept the region.

BJP's Nisith Pramanik then won from Coochbehar Parliamentary seat by a margin of over 54 thousand votes and went on to become the Union Minister of State for Home, as well as Union Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports between 2021 and 2024.

However, in 2024, allegiance wavered amidst rising concerns over the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) among the Rajbangshis, who feared that through the law squatters could secure legal status over the areas they consider their own.

Riding the wave of doubts, Trinamool Congress candidate from Coochbehar Lok Sabha seat, Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, defeated Pramanik in the 2024 Lok Sabha election by more than 39,000 votes.

And in that election, of the seven Assembly segments that constitutes Coochbehar Parliamentary constituency, the TMC led in four. Whereas in the 2021 Assembly election, the state’s ruling party could manage to win just two of these seats.

In other Parliamentary constituencies in north Bengal, where the Rajbangshi community holds influence -- like Alipurduars, Jalpaiguri, and Darjeeling -- the BJP stormed home, but with a considerably lesser margin.

It was only in Raiganj, that the saffron party won, increasing its margin over its closest Trinamool Congress challenger by more than 7,600 votes than 2019.

On SIR rollout in West Bengal, despite their differences, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Nagendra Ray, who leads the other faction of the GCPA, echoed Barman’s statement.

"Of course, we welcome SIR; it will identify fake voters and intruders," said Ray, who claims himself to be the descendant of the erstwhile ruler of Cooch Behar and is popularly addressed in the area as Ananta 'Maharaj'.

"I would say something is better than nothing (accepting demand for statehood)," he added. While both leaders demand the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) which they believe will help identify "outsiders" or "illegal squatters" in their land, they are opposed to CAA.

--IANS

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