The BJP national executive on Sunday released a special statement on the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise under way in Assam and declared that the party and government would not allow India to be used as a haven for “infiltrators” and that each of these “will be identified, stripped of citizenship rights and deported.”
The statement was released on the concluding day of the session after a special session on the issue.
Assam agitation
It gave a detailed background of the NRC exercise and how it came about due to the fear of swamping of the ethnic Assamese population by large-scale illegal migration into the State.
“This also led to a massive agitation by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) which ended in 1985, and had claimed nearly 800 lives,” said the statement.
The BJP, it said, had supported the demand of the agitation from 1980, the year the party was founded.
“Previous governments had been aware of the problem but due to vote bank politics did not have the gumption to take up the NRC exercise.
“After the directions of the Supreme Court in 2013 too, matters were not taken up with the swiftness that the Modi government demonstrated after it came to power in 2014,” said the statement.
Deporting Rohingyas
It referred to the Citizenship Amendment Bill now with a joint select committee of Parliament, stating that the party was committed to providing Indian citizenship to minority Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Zoroastrians fleeing religious persecution from the neighbouring countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Muslims are excluded in this Bill.
“The government is already undertaking the documentation of Rohingya refugees in India, and appropriate steps will be taken to deport them,” said the statement.
