Bihar villagers mistake researchers for NRC staff, drag them to police station
DARBHANGA: A team of researchers from Lucknow were mistaken as surveyors for the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and handed over to the police here in Bihar.
The superintendent of police of Darbhanga, Babu Ram said the incident took place on Friday when the team of 12 people, including four women, visited a village under the Jamalpur police station jurisdiction.
The team was from a Lucknow-based research organization that was engaged by a US-based PhD scholar to carry out the survey.
However, as they began visiting households and collecting information, word spread that 'NRC surveyors' were gathering information from the villagers. The local people grew furious and held them in captivity for some time before dragging them to the police station.
The situation was defused at the police station after staff there verified the identities of the researchers and explained it to the villagers, who then went back satisfied, the SP said.
He, however, added that similar incidents have taken place in the district in the recent past and an awareness campaign has been launched as part of which residents were being told to inform the police or local administrative officials if any surveyors in their area aroused suspicion "instead of illegally detaining them".
With the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register (NPR) spreading in different parts of Bihar, people engaged in conducting surveys for private research and marketing companies are being mistakenly targeted.
Prime minister Narendra Modi and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, whose JD(U) is an ally of the BJP, have been at pains to explain that the CAA would expedite grant of citizenship to refugees from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, if they have fled religious persecution in their countries.
Opposition parties have, however, accused the NDA of misleading the people on the issue and pointed out that a country-wide NRC was mentioned in the BJP's manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls. The NRC had also found mention in president Ram Nath Kovind's address to a joint session of Parliament last year apart from Union home minister Amit Shah's speech when the Citizenship Amendment Bill was being debated in the Lok Sabha, the opposition parties said.
