New Delhi: Amid the controversy over special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar ahead of next month’s Assembly elections, the issue of infiltration keeps coming up time and again.
On Friday, Union Home minister Amit Shah pointed out that the population of Muslims has been increasing and that of Hindus going down in India.
The reason? “Infiltration from Pakistan and Bangladesh,” Shah claimed.
Speaking at an event in Delhi, the Home minister said that voting rights in the country should only be available to citizens.
“The Muslim population has increased by 24.6 per cent, whereas the Hindu population has decreased by 4.5 per cent. I am telling you this because it hasn’t happened because of the fertility rate. It has happened because of infiltration,” PTI quoted Shah as saying.
Emphasising that the partition of India took place due to religion, Shah said that Pakistan was created on both sides of India, and infiltration happened from those sides, resulting in such a change in population pattern.
“I am going to tell you the difference between an infiltrator and a refugee. All the Hindu population that decreased in Pakistan and Bangladesh, many of them took refuge in India. And the Muslim population that increased in India wasn’t due to fertility, it was because many Muslims infiltrated into the country,” the Home minister elaborated.
Shah added that the inclusion of “infiltrators in the voters’ list” pollutes the spirit of the Constitution, and asserted that “voting rights should only be available to the citizens of the country”.
Shah urged that infiltration and the Election Commission’s SIR exercise should not be viewed from a political angle, as they are national issues.
Shah claimed that Congress is in a “denial mode” on the issue of SIR, though the exercise also took place when the party was in power.
“The opposition is opposing SIR exercise because their vote banks are getting cut… It is ECI’s constitutional responsibility to clean the voters’ list. You can go to court if you have issues,” Shah said.
“Free and fair elections cannot take place unless the voter list is according to the voters’ definition, which is being an Indian citizen and attaining the eligible age,” Shah concluded.