New Delhi would have to persuade Dhaka to take back the people lift out of the citizens’ list in Assam after the foreigners’ tribunals pass their final verdict, says the Northeastern Indian state’s Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
As many as 1.9 million people have been left off the National Register of Citizens released on Aug 31 after a mammoth years-long exercise to check illegal immigration.
“After the final verdict, we should start discussing with Bangladesh to accept its citizens who had settled in India illegally,” Sarma told the Times of India on Friday (Sept 6).
“Bangladesh and India are friendly nations. There have been regular occasions when 100, 150 people were sent back to Bangladesh but post-NRC numbers will be far higher.”
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, who has expressed dissatisfaction with the exercise to update the citizens’ register, said India would have to somehow convince Bangladesh to take back its citizens, according to the report.
“If it doesn’t accept them, we will have to evolve a way out,” Sarma was quoted saying.
In the interview with the Times of India, the Assam minister admitted that genuine citizens who are Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims were left out, before adding the inclusion of people with fake identities in the list was more worrying.
Resentment against illegal immigrants has simmered for years in Assam, one of India’s poorest states, with residents blaming outsiders, many said to come from Bangladesh, for stealing their jobs and land.
Officials checked documents submitted by roughly 33 million people for a draft released last year of a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, which left out more than 4 million residents of the state, many of them Hindu.
A woman waits to check her name on the draft list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), as she sits outside an NRC centre in Rupohi village, Nagaon district, northeastern state of Assam, India August 31, 2019. REUTERSBut 31.1 million people now make up the final list, with 1.9 million excluded — comprising of six percent of the state’s entire population.
Many political parties, including the Congress and the BJP, have criticised the NRC, pointing out that many Bengali Hindus have been left out of the register. Bengali Hindus are the BJP’s oldest vote bank in the state.
Bangladesh has denied anyone left the country to settle in India after the 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan, terming Assam citizenship an “internal matter” of India.
News18 contacted Bangladesh for comments on the NRC.
“Bangladesh has nothing to do with NRC. I repeat, it is India’s internal matter. I don’t know who said what in this matter. Let India inform us officially, then we will respond.
“All I can say is that no one from Bangladesh went to India after 1971. It may be possible that they settled (mainly Bengalis) in Assam from various parts of India itself, but not Bangladesh,” Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal told Indian media outlet News18 hours after the list was released on Aug 31.
He also said he did not think the Indian government will push anyone towards Bangladesh.
