CAA buzz missing in Silchar, but BJP races ahead on work, hopes as Cong, TMC vie for second spot

When Silchar in Assam was submerged under a devastating flood in June 2022, Nikhil Das, 36, and his family spent 25 days on the tin roof of their kutcha house. He points to a bridge that was built later that year, over the ponds skirting his house that they earlier used to wade through to reach home. Flagging it as an example of “development”, he says this is one of the reasons for his support to the BJP.

Nikhil is a resident of Tapoban Nagar, a settlement largely of the Hindu Bengali migrants on the outskirts of Silchar in the Barak Valley. Like many locals, his name did not feature in the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, which was published in 2019.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the ruling BJP’s promise to ensure the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in the event of its return to power, garnered mass support from the Hindu Bengali community in the Barak Valley. This region – which shares over 125-km-long border with Bangladesh – saw the influx of a large Bengali Hindu population following Partition in a bid to escape persecution in what was then East Pakistan.

The BJP pledged that the Act would bring relief to the Bengali Hindus facing citizenship challenges by easing and fast-tracking the citizenship process for such migrants.

While the CAA was passed in December 2019, its rules were notified last month just ahead of the announcement of the 2024 Lok Sabha poll schedule.

However, the hopes among many Bengali Hindus that the CAA would bring relief to them seem to have dimmed now. The Indian Express has reported how the process for applying under the Act, which requires documentation to prove that the applicant is a Bangladeshi national, poses a new challenge to those grappling with the