Home minister Amit Shah on Wednesday repeated in Parliament what was an important campaign issue of the BJP in the last Lok Sabha elections — identification of all “infiltrators” and their deportation.
Shah was responding to a question by Samajwadi Party’s Javed Ali Khan in the Rajya Sabha.
Khan wanted to know if the government was planning National Registers of Citizens for other states, similar to the one which is being implemented in Assam.
“The NRC in the context of Assam is part of the Assam Accord. We have heard the President’s speech. The manifesto — on the basis of which this government was elected to power —also stated that all illegal residents and infiltrators living on every inch of India’s land will be identified and deported according to the international law,” Shah said.
Minister of state for home affairs Nityanand Rai said the NRC in Assam was to be published by July 31 as per the direction of the Supreme Court.
However, the central government has approached the apex court for more time.
“Twenty-five lakh petitions, addressed to the President, have been received by the government. These are regarding inclusion of many undeserving names in the NRC. Also there are complaints about exclusion of names of genuine citizens from the NRC. The government has approached the Supreme Court for more time to verify these petitions,” Rai said.
“The government is of the opinion that no illegal resident should be included in the NRC and no genuine citizen should be excluded,” he said.
In the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP campaigned on the issues of infiltration and government’s commitment to national security. They used NRC update as their achievement.
The NRC update process started after the Assam Accord was signed on August 15, 1985, when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister.
The accord was signed following agitations by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) between 1979 and 1985.
In 2005, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided to implement the accord by updating the NRC.
In December 2013, the Centre issued a notification for NRC update. The NDA government has expedited the process.
