A controversial statement by a BJP Rajya Sabha member from West Bengal, in which he spoke about the confinement of people excluded from the electoral rolls in detention camps allegedly ordered by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, has led the BJP’s West Bengal unit to publicly dissociate itself from the remarks, triggering sharp political reactions in the state.
The controversy arose after Ananta Roy, also known as Maharaj and a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, addressed a meeting at Adabari in Dinhata in Cooch Behar district, where he claimed that individuals whose names were deleted from the voters’ list would be confined to detention camps and would subsequently be required to establish their origin.
Roy further indicated that social welfare benefits provided by the Union government would be stopped for those who lost their voting rights, linking disenfranchisement to both detention and the withdrawal of state support.
A video recording of the speech circulated widely on social media platforms, following which the BJP’s West Bengal state unit sought to distance itself from Roy’s comments.
State BJP president Samik Bhattacharya stated that he was unaware of the circumstances or reasoning that led Roy to make such claims and suggested that the matter would be examined by the party’s central leadership.
The remarks became a point of contention in the politically sensitive region of north Bengal, where questions around citizenship, voter verification and migration have frequently influenced electoral discourse, and where detention camps have remained a contentious subject following earlier debates on the National Register of Citizens and related exercises in neighbouring Assam.
Roy’s assertion that residents would be compelled to prove their origins despite long-standing habitation in the region added to the unease surrounding the statement.
Trinamool Congress sought to place responsibility at the highest levels of the Union government, arguing that, as Roy is a sitting BJP MP, the prime minister bears responsibility for clarifying the government’s position and addressing the concerns raised by the statement.
Girindranath Barman, the Trinamool Congress chairperson in Cooch Behar, framed the issue as one that could not be dismissed as an individual opinion, given the seniority and party affiliation of the MP involved.