New Delhi: Hours after the final National Register of Citizen (NRC) was published in Assam, senior journalist and expert Deepak Dewan on Saturday has said that government of India should take a step forward as far as handling of "illegal migrants" issue is concerned.
Talking to ETV Bharat, Dewan said that Bangladesh has denied accepting such illegal migrants.
"Neither Assam nor any other states in northeast can bear the burden of illegal foreigners... all the northeastern states have been demanding NRC. It's a good exercise to know how many such people are living in the states," said Dewan.
Highlighting that it's a wild guess on the presence of such people, Dewan said, "Today's NRC publication has also raised question on the government records. People who have approached the NRC verification centres with their refugee certificates, they were denied of being included in the list because government does not have any such records to substantiate their citizenship."
Raising a question mark on the re-verification process, the journalist said, "We don't know what will happen after the re-verification process."
According to the government notifications, people who did not get their names in the final NRC, could appeal in the Foreigners Tribunal and courts claiming their citizenship. The National Register of Citizens intends to identify legal residents and weed out illegal immigrants from the state. The government had said it carried out the mammoth exercise to detect and deport undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh.
On being asked will Bangladesh accept the illegal immigrants, Dewan said, "I don't think government of Bangladesh will accept anybody without documents. In that case government of India should think a step ahead what to do with such settlers."
Dewan also claimed that the issue of illegal foreigners have been used by different political parties from time to time for their political mileage.
"Of late, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has raised her voice against any such move (NRC)... In fact the then Hiteswar Saikia-led Congress government in Assam had used the issue of illegal foreigners for political gain," he added.
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