People wait to check their names on the draft list at the NRC centre at a village in Nagaon district, Assam, recently. File/Reuters

Resmi Sivaram

Union Home Minister Amit Shah asserted in Parliament on Wednesday that illegal immigrants staying in any part of the country will be deported after identification. “The government will identify illegal immigrants living on every inch of the country’s soil and will deport them as per the international law,” Shah said.

Shah’s response came in the Rajya Sabha, upper chamber, in response to a query raised by Samajwadi Party member Javed Ali Khan, who wanted to know whether the union government plans to extend the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to all states in the country.

The NRC, set up for Assam in 1951, is being updated for a first time under the supervision of the Supreme Court and July 31 has been set as a deadline for final publication of the registered data.

Shah said: “The NRC is part of the Assam Accord and was also in (BJP’s) election manifesto based on which the government has come to power. The government will identify illegal immigrants living on every inch of the country’s soil and will deport them as per the international law.”

Earlier Shah’s junior minister Nityanand Rai told the upper chamber that the government is likely to extend the deadline to release the final draft of NRC in Assam. The deadline is July 31, but may be extended in order to “maintain fairness” of procedure, Rai said.

The Supreme Court had on Tuesday refused to hear pleas from the Centre and Assam for an extension. The petitions sought re-verification of 20% of the names on the NRC.

Rai noted that the government has received several representations seeking such extension. A petition signed by about 2.5 million applicants has reached the Centre and the President. Many genuine names have been left out and many bogus names are registered, the plea says. “So the government has requested the (Supreme) Court to extend the time for this purpose,” Rai said.

“There will be some delay but the NRC will be implemented properly without any faults,” he said.

Asked about Rohingya Muslims in India, Rai said, “We don’t have an accurate data. They are spread across the country. Some of them have gone back to Bangladesh. We will get the data soon.” Foreigner tribunals have also been set up to curb illegal stay of foreigners in India, he said.