'Will rid India of illegal foreigners': Amit Shah renews vow in Assam; praises ex-CM Borbora

NEW DELHI: Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will fulfil its promise of making the country free of infiltrators.

Speaking at a programme in Guwahati on the birth centenary of Assam’s first non-Congress chief minister, Golap Borbora, Shah said the high-power demography mission announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Independence Day would help study demographic patterns and identify infiltrators.


"We had made a promise to Assam, but we have not been able to fulfil it in 10 years. But we will keep our promise and make Assam and the entire country free of illegal foreigners," he said.

"I am among those people who believe that not a single infiltrator should stay in our country," he added.

Shah recalled that Borbora, who led a Janata Party government in Assam from March 1978 to September 1979, had ordered a drive to clean up the voters' list during the Mangaldai Lok Sabha by-election.

"Even in the absence of computerised electoral rolls, Borbora's government detected names of 36,780 illegal foreigners, and this cleansing of the voters' list can be deemed as the origin of the Assam Agitation," he said.

He said the Election Commission is now cleaning the voters' list through the SIR process, but some parties are opposing it. "It shows the moral degradation in today's politics," he said.

Shah said Borbora would have opposed the parties that are against the SIR exercise.

He also praised the Assam government for its measures against "infiltrators", including eviction of encroachments. He appreciated chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his government for honouring Borbora, noting that Borbora was a socialist leader with no links to the BJP.

Earlier in the day, Shah, in an apparent reference to state Congress president Gaurav Gogoi's alleged "links" with the foreign nation, said Assam cannot be led by people who make frequent visits to Pakistan.

He asserted that the BJP-led NDA will form the third consecutive government in Assam next year.

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