By IANS
New Delhi : Despite her eagerness to return to Kolkata after being on the run for five days, the Indian government is yet to give Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen the security clearance to go back to the city she calls her home.
“We are still evaluating the security situation but I guess it’s a matter of days before we decide,” a top security official told IANS here Monday.
Nasreen has been camping at Rajasthan House, a guesthouse of the Rajasthan government in the capital, since Friday night after she was virtually hounded out of Kolkata, forcing her to shift to Jaipur initially last week.
But she was hurriedly shifted from Jaipur to Delhi after the All India Milli Council threatened to hold protests if the writer was kept in Rajasthan for long.
Anticipating outbreak of violence in various parts of Rajasthan, especially Jaipur, senior Rajasthan officials decided that Nasreen would be a guest of the state government but outside the state, till such time the union home ministry took a decision on her stay and security.
Talking to news channels from Rajasthan House, Nasreen Monday said, “I dream of walking around freely in Kolkata. I want to go back, it is my home.
“I think fundamentalist forces cannot afford to dictate terms,” Nasreen told the news channel CNN-IBN.
Even as Nasreen awaits the government’s verdict on her visa status and location of her stay in India, she, along with her brother Faizal, has been surfing Bengali news channels to gauge the mood and situation in Kolkata.
Nasreen told her visitors that she had received no official calls from the West Bengal government asking her to return as was reported in some sections of the media.
Faced with an all-round attack on the Nasreen affair, West Bengal’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) washed its hands off the matter saying the Bangladeshi writer moved to Jaipur on her own and it was for the government to decide where she should stay.
CPI-M Politburo member Sitaram Yechury asserted that the controversial writer was not forced out of Kolkata by the West Bengal government and the state had no role to play in deciding her stay in the country.
Yechury faced a barrage of questions from reporters, but his refrain was that it was the “sole prerogative” of the central government to decide where she should stay and “wherever she goes it was incumbent upon the state government there to provide security”.
“Whether she should remain in India or not and whether her visa should be extended or not is a decision to be taken by the central government. It is beyond the scope of any state government. Let the central government decide on this,” he said.
Asked about reports that West Bengal government had asked her to move out of the state, Yechury said: “Nobody forced her” and added that “she can move anywhere she wants if the central government permits.”
He denied reports that the Left Front government was not keen on Nasreen’s return.
“Do not try to bring the West Bengal government or the CPI-M into the issue. She has stayed in Kolkata for the last three years and protection was given by the state government,” he said.