Sabuj Das, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) panchayat member and Hindu refugee from Bangladesh, says the Supreme Court’s direction to protect the voting rights of delisted citizens if appellate tribunals allow their appeals has come “too late”.
A voter checks his name from West Bengal’s draft electoral rolls following special intensive revision (SIR), in Siliguri, West Bengal (PTI FILE PHOTO)
Bengal’s East Burdwan district – where Das is an opposition member in the Trinamool Congress-controlled Kalekhatala 2 panchayat under the Purbasthali North assembly seat – is due to vote in the first of the two-phase Assembly elections on April 23.
“The Centre gave us an opportunity to become Indian nationals under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), and the Election Commission of India (ECI) marked the CAA certificate as one of the valid documents for the SIR (special intensive revision) of the electoral roll. Yet, hundreds of Hindu refugees got delisted because they did not get the CAA certificate on time. Nobody knows how many of them have moved the tribunals,” Das told HT on Friday.
At Booth No. 243, where I am listed among the 700-odd voters, 40 Hindus and tribal people were delisted. I applied for the CAA certificate in September 2025 and got it in January. My family is still waiting,” Das, who entered India in 2005 according to the ‘Certificate of Naturalisation’ issued online, said.
The document, seen by HT, described his parents and wife as “Bangladeshi.”
A large number of Hindu refugees from Bangladesh live in districts bordering the neighbouring country. This population comprises Dalits, especially those from the Matua community, who have supported the BJP in every election since 2019 because they were promised citizenship.
Studies have shown that a sizeable section of those who came from East Pakistan after 1947 and from Bangladesh after the 1971 Liberation War were Dalits and Namasudras. Although a census of the Dalit Matuas has never been conducted, the community claims to have over 10 million members, the majority of whom are in Bengal.
“Refugees from poor economic backgrounds were hesitant to seek citizenship because TMC spread a rumour that people opting for CAA would be declared aliens and put in detention camps,” Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Debjit Sarkar said.
On Friday, chief minister Mamata Banerjee repeated the message to the Matua community at her rally in north Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, which shares borders with both Assam and Bangladesh and goes to the polls on April 23.
“The Matuas were made to sign a statement that they came from Bangladesh. This automatically makes them declare that they are aliens. This is a scam,” Banerjee said.
The CAA promises expedited citizenship to non-Muslims who entered India from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan before December 31, 2014 to escape religious persecution.
The law was enforced on March 11, 2024, almost 55 months after Parliament passed the Act. The Centre subsequently launched an online application portal, and the BJP has held hundreds of camps to help Hindu refugees complete the forms.
In September 2025, the Centre issued a separate order that allowed non-Muslims from Bangladesh, who entered India on or before December 31, 2024 to escape religious persecution, to stay in the country without even valid documentation.
On March 2, the Union home ministry increased the number of empowered committees in Bengal from one to three to expedite the screening process for CAA applications.
Mihir Goswami, the BJP MLA from Cooch Behar district’s Natabari seat, told HT at that time that no one from his region had received the CAA certificate till February 1.
TMC Rajya Sabha member Mamata Bala Thakur said the BJP created a narrative claiming that the SIR exercise would identify Muslim infiltrators. “In reality, it wanted to stop the Matuas from casting their votes in our favour,” said Thakur, who leads one of the two factions of the All India Matua Mahasangha, the supreme body of the Matuas. The other faction is headed by BJP leader and Union minister of state Shantanu Thakur.
“The number of delisted Matua voters ranges around 30,000 in the district assembly constituencies. It is higher in seats reserved for the Scheduled Caste candidates. In the Bongaon (SC) seat, for example, around 84,000 people have been delisted,” TMC leader Mamata Bala Thakur told HT.
North 24 Parganas and Nadia, the two south Bengal districts with a high concentration of Hindu refugee voters, go to the polls in the second phase on April 29.
Thakurnagar, the headquarters of the Mahasangha, is located in Bongaon, North 24 Parganas.
“Most of the Matuas were carried away by the BJP’s promises and voted for it in recent polls. People who strictly follow the Matua religion will never vote for the BJP. It is distinct from Hinduism and is opposed to Manuvaad that the BJP believes in,” Thakur added.
According to the last decadal census held in 2011, Hindus account for 70.54 % of Bengal’s population of 91.3 million. The state’s SC population stood at 21.4 million, or 23.51 % of the total population, at that time.
While addressing rallies, Mamata Banerjee has projected the CAA as a threat to both Hindus and Muslims saying it is a precursor to enforcement of National Register of Citizens (NRC) which left 1.9 million Hindus in jeopardy in BJP-ruled Assam in 2018.
