- Amit Shah says BJP will now pick out each, every infiltrator
Indian lawmaker Amit Shah who is serving as president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called Bangladeshi migrants ‘termites,’ saying they (migrants) would be wiped out, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Addressing a rally at Gangapur in Rajasthan, the Rajya Sabha went on to credit the BJP government with publishing the National Register of Citizens in Assam and identifying nearly four million illegal immigrants. “It will now pick out each and every infiltrator,” he said.
Owing to their wood-eating habits, many termite species can do great damage to unprotected buildings and other wooden structures. Their habit of remaining concealed often results in their presence being undetected until the timbers are severely damaged, leaving a thin layer of a wall that protects them from the environment.
In August, BJP president in West Bengal Dilip Ghosh has said that there are 10 million (one crore) illegal Bangladeshis living in the state. “They (Bangladeshis) have a huge influence on the politics of the state because of their huge numbers,” he said, adding that they (Bangladeshis) also have a huge hand in terrorism, be it guns or fake currency or even making bombs.
“You check in big cities like Mumbai and Delhi, you will find so many Bangladeshi Muslims. They have made colonies across India,” Dilip Ghosh said. “If you are an outsider in Bengal, you will not be able to differentiate between a West Bengal citizen and a Bangladeshi citizen,” he said.
In July, Bangladesh Minister for Information Hasanul-Haque Inu said that there was no reason for Bangladesh to respond as New Delhi has not had any official communication with Dhaka. Also, these four million people were not Bangladeshis, he said, adding that these (migrant) people probably belonged to neighbouring states of Assam.
The government in Dhaka admitted that there was large-scale migration from Bangladesh to India during the 1971 ‘war’ under a mutual agreement between the countries. Since 1971, all those who had crossed over to India have been repatriated and rehabilitated in Bangladesh, he said. According to the minister, there has been no other reports of migration since 1971, so allegations of several million of the ‘illegal’ Bangladeshi migrants living in India were baseless and inaccurate.
According to the 2017 International Migration Report, the number of Bangladeshis living in India has come down by 800,000 since 2000 and now stands at 3.1 million. It said that the number of migrants from all countries living in India now (in 2017) was 5.2 million, a fall of 1.22 million from 2000.