Guwahati: Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Monday that the government will detect illegal infiltrators from all corners of the country and send back to their home country.
“It is the BJP’s resolve to detect and deport ‘ghuspethiye’ (illegal infiltrators) not just from Assam, but from the entire country,” Shah said at a public event in Assam.
Shah, who inaugurated the redevelopment project of Batadrava Than, the birthplace of 15th-16th century neo-Vaishnavite saint-scholar and socio-religious reformer Srimanta Sankardev in Nagaon district’s Borduwa, praised the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led BJP government in Assam for evicting illegal encroachers from around 47,850 acres of forest and government land.
“Was it okay to have Bangladeshi infiltrators in the sacred birthplace of Srimanta Sankardev? I want to thank the government of Himanta Biswa Sarma for evicting encroachers from this place and setting up the ‘naam-ghar’ (prayer house),” Shah said.
The Home Minister took the opportunity to renew his attack on the Opposition.
“The Congress kept on encouraging these illegal infiltrators for years. They introduced the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) (IMDT) Act in 1983, thus paving a legal way of allowing illegal infiltrators to settle.”
The IMDT Act, applicable only in Assam, put the onus of proving someone to be an illegal foreigner on the complainant. In 2005, the Supreme Court struck down the act as unconstitutional while hearing a petition filed by former Assam CM and current Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal.
