- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE Indian opposition on Monday (19) attacked the Narendra Modi government over the nationality of newly inducted Union minister of state for home Nisith Pramanik, alleging he was a Bangladeshi national. The government dismissed the charge as “baseless” and hit back at the opponents accusing it of casting aspersions on a leader who belongs to a tribal community.
Opposition members led by Trinamool Congress (TMC) parliamentarian Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and the Indian National Congress’s Mallikarjun Kharge, the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, asked the government to clear its stand over the nationality of the minister.
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Without naming the minister, Sekhar said, “The prime minister has been allowed to lay a list of the ministers after the reshuffle. Go through Wikipedia, then you will find the name of the gentleman… A Minister of State for Home Affairs is reportedly a Bangladeshi.”
Sekhar was supported by Kharge and other opposition members. “He has raised a relevant point. It’s a point of order,” Kharge said, adding, “I have every right to know whether he is a Bangladeshi or not.”
The nationality of Pramanik has come under the scanner in recent times and opposition parties like the Indian National Congress and Trinamool Congress (TMC) have targeted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre over the issue. The question raised by Congress member of Rajya Sabha Ripun Bora that Pramanik, 36, is a Bangladeshi national, has created an outrage in the politics of the eastern state of West Bengal which shares a border with Bangladesh.
In a letter to prime minister Narendra Modi last Friday (16), Bora said he wanted to bring to the notice of the former a “very serious and sensitive matter regarding the citizenship and birth place” of Pramanik. Bora said as per reports published in a news channel, Pramanik’s birth place is Harinathpur which falls in Gaibandha district of Bangladesh. He said Pramanik came to Bengal to study computers and after completing his course, joined the TMC before shifting to the BJP. He was elected as a member of the Lok Sabha from the Cooch Behar constituency in northern Bengal in 2019 and recently, Modi picked him as a Union minister. He is the youngest minister in the current cabinet.
Bora also said that the address that Pramanik showed as his in the election papers was not correct. He also cited news reports to allege that people in his native village in Bangladesh were jubilant after he got a ministerial berth in the home ministry, one of the key departments of the Indian government.
Union minister and leader of the House Piyush Goyal called the opposition’s allegation “baseless” and said there was no truth in it.
“This should be expunged. It’s an insult of a big leader and a large society to which he belongs,” he said, adding such remarks against a leader from the tribal community were condemnable.
As the issue sparked an uproar, Rajya Sabha deputy chairman Harivansh Narayan Singh tried to pacify the members but he succeeded little.
Earlier in the day, which was the first day of the monsoon session, Modi was prevented from introducing his newly-inducted Union ministers to Rajya Sabha as several slogan-shouting opposition members trooped into the Well of the House to protest over various issues, including farm laws and fuel price hike.
The prime minister slammed the opposition’s conduct saying “what kind of mindset is this” that prevents them from giving respect to the new ministers who are women, Dalits and come from ST (Scheduled Tribes) and OBC (Other Backward Class) communities.
