SIR deletions, CAA rule anger Matuas of Bengal; 6,000 deleted from Rajarhat rolls alone
Telegraph | 11 April 2026
A Matua leader who hosted Union home minister Amit Shah for lunch at his home in 2020 is now urging his community to vote for “any party that has worked for our welfare”.
Nabin Biswas, Rajarhat New Town resident and working president of the All India Matua Mahasangha, said the community had realised that the BJP’s promise of citizenship for Matuas would require the applicants to first declare they had come from Bangladesh.
And the consequences of doing that are still unclear to Matuas, Biswas said.
The large-scale deletion of Matua voters from the electoral rolls during the ongoing SIR has further incensed the community.
Biswas said 6,000 Matuas had been deleted from the Rajarhat New Town rolls alone.
Matuas are lower-caste Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh. Their largest concentration in Bengal is in Thakurnagar, North 24-Parganas, the headquarters of the All India Matua Mahasangha.
How the community votes can influence the results in at least 20 Assembly seats in Nadia and North 24-Parganas alone. Besides, Matuas are spread across the state, particularly in pockets of Calcutta such as Jadavpur, Kasba and Tollygunge.
“We are asking community members to vote for a candidate from any political party that has worked in favour of the Matua community,” Biswas said, adding that nearly 1 crore Matuas were members of the Mahasangha.
Pictures of Biswas and his wife, Suchandra, hosting Shah at their home are still on the BJP website.
“Of the 40,000 Matua voters in Rajarhat New Town, 6,000 have had their names deleted from the electoral rolls. In the Rajarhat Gopalpur Assembly seat, 5,000 Matuas out of 18,000 have been removed from the rolls,” Biswas said.
Biswas and Suchandra have been spared the SIR’s axe, though.
Biswas said that leaders of the community had asked Matuas to vote for Trinamool candidates Tapas Chatterjee and Aditi Munshi in theRajarhat New Town and Rajarhat Gopalpur seats, respectively.
Trinamool won Rajarhat New Town by over 56,000 votes and Rajarhat Gopalpur by over 25,000 votes in 2021.
In Jadavpur, members of the Matua Mission, another community organisation, too sounded hurt and angry.
“Frankly, there is a deep sense of discontent with the BJP. The promised citizenship is a lot less simple than it sounds,” said Prabhas Mondal, president of the Matua Mission.
The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, provides for fast-tracking the grant of Indian citizenship to, among others, non-Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
However, the citizenship applicants have to state clearly that they are from another country. The possible consequences of doing that remain hazy for the Matuas, who currently enjoy voting and other rights inIndia.
The BJP-led central government decided to implement the Act ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2024, and framed the rules. These rules have ensured that acquiring citizenship would not be easy, a Matua community member said.
“The rules say that one has to mention where and when one was born in Bangladesh and give evidence of it,” he said.
“How can someone who has lived in India for decades procure birth documents from Bangladesh, and whywould the Bangladeshi authorities agree to provide these documents?”
He said most of the Matuas he knew had desisted from applying for citizenship after learning about the legal complexities.
“We have voter cards, Aadhaar cards and PAN cards. If we now declare that we were born in Bangladesh and are waiting to secure Indian citizenship, all these identity documents will become invalid. What will happen later, no one knows,” a community member said, requesting anonymity.
The Matuas have rebuilt their lives and developed their own identity and culture during their decades living in Bengal, which they do not want to risk jeopardising.
Once denied entry into temples controlled by upper-caste Hindus, community members have built their own shrines.
These temples to Harichand Thakur, Shanti Mata and Guruchand Thakur — in localities like Mukundapur, Bagha Jatin and Kalikapur — remain crucial to Matuas’ identity and culture even today.
The CPM has fielded Saptarshi Deb, son of former Left Front minister Gautam Deb, in Rajarhat New Town. The BJP candidate is Piyush Kanodia.
In Rajarhat Gopalpur, the CPM has fielded Subhajit Dasgupta while lawyer and party spokesperson Tarun Jyoti Tiwari is the BJP candidate.