Around 45 km from the Petrapol border, people are queuing at Palpara to seek help applying for citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), many saying they fear deportation to Bangladesh if they do not register.
BJP MLA Asim Sarkar has converted part of his Palpara residence into a CAA camp, where party volunteers receive forms and help applicants compile documents.
Sarkar said camps operate across his five mandals but so far only about 400 people have filed applications. At the makeshift centre he fields questions, checks paperwork and oversees volunteers who verify the identity proofs and other papers brought by applicants.
Among those at the camp was 50-year-old Milan Roy, who says he fled Patenga in Bangladesh after facing persecution.
“I have come to find out how to apply for CAA. I was told by a relative that the Indian government is granting citizenship to those persecuted Hindus who have come from Bangladesh due to atrocities,” Roy told The Indian Express.
He said he paid a middleman to cross the border and has stayed with relatives in West Bengal since. “For over a year I have not seen my family. I had come to this country to save my life but I have ended up in more trouble now. Over here also I am not getting proper jobs. There is no steady income but now I am hopeful that if I get the citizenship then at least I will get some job and will be able to bring my family to India.”
The camp also drew longtime residents who say they migrated decades ago but now fear being classed as “illegal.” Ram Chandra Guin, 55, who says he entered India in 1998 with his then-17-year-old wife and one-year-old son, said he has built a life in India, a shop, a house, voter identity documents, and now seeks official recognition.
“I am applying for CAA now because I heard that the government will push back all who have come from Bangladesh. We have seen on TV that many people from Delhi have been sent back to Bangladesh and over there they are in Bangladesh prison so I am applying now,” Guin said. He added that earlier he had avoided applying for fear of being marked an illegal infiltrator: “Previously we were told that like in Assam the Bangladeshi are sent to detention camps; we will also be sent. But then we found out that this is not true.”
Sitting outside Sarkar’s office, a young couple in their early 30s with a two-year-old son, who asked for anonymity, said they arrived on student visas in 2021 but now regard the move as permanent. Hailing from Khulna, they said the family remained in Bangladesh but “we are not safe there anymore, my son will not be safe there. We have a passport and visa but the day we left we knew it was a one-way trip, we will never go back again.”
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
