Two disasters — one caused by water and the other by fire — in adjoining West Bengal districts six years apart may have kept several women out of Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) released on August 31.
Jalpaiguri, the district headquarters, had in 1968 experienced a disastrous flood. And in 1974, a fire razed much of the District Magistrate’s office in Cooch Behar, the headquarters of the district of the same name.
'ऐसे नेताओं की जरूरत है, जो प्रधानमंत्री से बिना डरे बात कर सकें'
Runa Saraswati survived the Jalpaiguri flood to be married into one of Guwahati’s oldest Bengali families. Now 68, she feels she probably lived this long for her identity as an Indian to be “erased” by a deluge of a political kind with judicial sanction — the NRC.