Murshidabad, May 29 (IANS) Amid the BJP government’s measures against illegal infiltrators in West Bengal, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Friday asked, “what stopped the BJP-led Centre from driving out Bangladeshi infiltrators from West Bengal during their three-term regime at the Centre?”

Notably, ever since the BJP came to power in Bengal, the Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari-led government has set up ‘holding centres’ in the state for providing temporary accommodation to illegal infiltrators before they are handed over to the Border Security Force (BSF) at its nearest border outposts (BOPs), from where they will be sent back to their own countries.

There has been a huge influx of infiltrators at the Hakimpur border since Tuesday night.

Addressing the media, Chowdhury acknowledged that illegal infiltration has been taking place since decades in the country.

“The government can do anything. We are seeing detention centres in Assam as well. We do not have any data on how many infiltrators were caught or how many were sent back to Bangladesh,” he said.

Maintaining that the government should fulfill what it had promised, he said: “Given the noise surrounding all this, the government should reveal the figures of how many infiltrators have been caught and sent back.”

The Congress leader questioned the Centre on what had been stopping it from taking action against the infiltrators till now.

“Laws have been passed for this, such as the NRC and many others. You people (BJP-led NDA) are the ones running the country for the third term, and even the Prime Minister of the country belongs to your party (BJP). So, who had stopped you for so many days from removing Bangladeshis?,” he said.

However, Chowdhury stressed that the BJP government should look into the facts that how many of the illegal infiltrators are Hindus and Muslims, how many of them are being ‘pushed back’, how many are being legally deported and how many of them has the Bangladeshi government agreed to take back.

While emphasising that not a single infiltrator should stay back in India, he urged the BJP-led Centre to release a White Paper regarding the government’s calculations.

“How many infiltrators are residing in India, should be made public by the government,” he asserted.

–IANS

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