india

Updated: Jun 27, 2020 21:38 IST

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday underlined the Centre’s intention to expel all illegal immigrants not just from Assam but the entire country.

“Our intention is to expel illegal immigrants from the entire country and not just Assam,” Shah said at fourth conclave of the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) in Guwahati, according to PTI.

But he did not declare a time frame for the expulsions. He had earlier stressed on deporting illegal immigrants during the Lok Sabha election campaign.

The home minister is on his first visit to the Northeast since the final list of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was published in Assam on August 31. The list excluded 1.9 million people and caused a lot of heartburn in the state. The BJP which once enthusiastically supported the NRC later opposed it after many Bengali Hindus were left out of the finalist.

The fallout of the NRC also led to neighbouring states like Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram tightening their border security. Nagaland and Mizoram also raised scrutiny levels for issuing Inner Line Permits (ILPs) for outsiders in a bid to prevent any possible influx of illegal immigrants.

Shah also accused successive Congress governments of alienating the region from the rest of the country and blamed the party’s ‘divide and rule’ policy for insurgency that had plagued much of the region for a long time.

“The Congress governments sowed the seeds of strife in the northeast. The party did not care for the northeast and because of that militancy flourished. It always believed in the policy of divide and rule,” he said on the second day of his two-day visit.

He also said it was important to push the Congress out of power in the Northeast to ensure that every state feels that it an integral part of India. The Congress which once ruled all the eight Northeastern states, is not in power in any of them.

“Every state is an integral part of India. To spread this feeling at grass-root level it was important to make Northeast ‘Congress mukt’. Today, I’m delighted that all eight states of Northeast are with NEDA,” he said.