The Bengal government will soon set up two detention centres to house foreign nationals arrested on criminal charges, but the camps have “absolutely no connection” with the National Register of Citizens (NRC), according to a Trinamul Congress minister.

The Mamata Banerjee-led dispensation, which has stated its opposition to any NRC-like exercise in the state, has already finalised a piece of land in the New Town area, the state's correctional services minister Ujjwal Biswas told PTI.

The process of scouting for land in Bongaon in North 24-Parganas for the second detention centre is also underway, Biswas said.

He said a government building in Bongaon could be converted to the second camp to temporarily house the foreign nationals till the piece of land is identified.

“These detention camps are being constructed adhering to Supreme Court directives, according to which foreign nationals under trial and those convicted should not be kept with local inmates,” he said.

“This has absolutely no connection with the NRC. Please don’t link it to NRC,” the minister added.

Biswas also cited a 2014 directive of the Centre, which asked all states to set up at least one detention centre for illegal immigrants and foreign nationals awaiting deportation after completion of their sentence.

Most of these foreign nationals belong to African countries, sources in the correctional department said.

“Till now, the foreign nationals arrested for criminal activities are housed along with local inmates. But we have observed that this creates problems due to different cultures and languages, and the situation becomes quite difficult for us to handle,” Biswas said.

As many as 110 foreign nationals are currently under trial and have been kept with local inmates at different correctional homes in the state, the sources said.

The two detention centres would be able to accommodate around 200 inmates, the sources said.

The BJP has been demanding the implementation of an NRC-like exercise in Bengal in order to drive out Bangladeshi Muslims for the sake of the country’s internal security.

The proposed implementation in the state has become a flash point with chief minister Mamata Banerjee vehemently opposing the move. It had created a panic, claiming 11 lives in Bengal.

The fear among people in the state was triggered by the omission of about 19.6 lakh names from the final NRC list in Assam.

Assam has six detention centres inside district jails in Goalpara, Kokrajhar, Tezpur, Dibrugarh, Jorhat and Silchar for persons declared foreigners by the foreigners tribunals.

“There will be no Assam-like detention camps in Bengal because there is going to be no NRC in this state,” Banerjee had recently said.