West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will hold a rally in the bordering district of Thakurnagar on November 25. This is the Matua community headquarters, which is in turmoil over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
Currently, there are two factions of Matuas. One supports the Trinamool Congress (TMC) headed by Rajya Sabha MP Mamata Bala Thakur, and the other supports the BJP headed by Shantanu Thakur, Union Minister of State.
TMC is going all out to consolidate the Matua support ahead of next year's state elections.
Matuas dominate at least 30 Assembly seats in Bengal and have a dominating population in 70 assembly seats, which are all SC reserved. Bengal has 294 total seats. The Matuas comprise 17 per cent of Bengal's population according to the 2011 census record.
A section of the Matua community in West Bengal celebrated the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) notified by the central government last year in March, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in the country. This Hindu namasudra community had fled from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and settled in West Bengal. Their long-standing demand for CAA was fulfilled by the Modi-led NDA government. However, Bengal BJP sources say, the Matuas are having a tough time gathering documents to prove their citizenship amid the ongoing SIR exercise.
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