Patna: BJP leader and deputy CM Samrat Choudhary said the same RJD chief Lalu Prasad and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, who once opposed the illegal immigrants in 1992 and 2005 respectively, are today supporting them.He said the then Bihar CM Lalu and the then TMC MP Mamata had advocated to expel the infiltrators from the country. “But today, for vote bank politics, they want to keep lakhs of infiltrators in the voter list and are opposing the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar.Choudhary called it their double standards and anti-national politics of the opposition and said the people of Bihar understand the difference between their words and action.The senior BJP leader said the SIR is a transparent and democratic process. “Its purpose is to identify people included in the voter list illegally, so that the sanctity of the Indian election system is maintained,” he said. Citing a news item published on Sept 29,1992, he said Lalu, along with the CMs of Assam, West Bengal, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh among the other states, had attended a high-level meeting called by the then home minister SB Chauhan in Delhi. “Lalu had prominently raised the issue of infiltration and demanded the central govt to take effective steps to stop illegal entry from Bangladesh. He had said infiltrators were buying immovable property in India and this should be stopped. He had also said identity cards should be issued to Indian citizens in the border states so that infiltrators could be identified and expelled from the country,” Choudhary claimed.“Similarly, in 2005, Mamata had also said the Left Front govt was making Bangladeshi infiltrators voters in West Bengal. Mamata, along with George Fernandes and Rajnath Singh, had met the then President, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam and handed over evidence of irregularities in the voter list of West Bengal,” he said.“Today, when the SIR is being done in Bihar for this transparency, the same leaders and parties of the opposition are against it. It shows that due to vote bank politics, now even the infiltrators have become their favourites,” he alleged.
