BJP will keep its promise to make country free of infiltrators: Amit Shah

Guwahati, Aug 29 (PTI) Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said the BJP will keep its promise to make the country free of infiltrators.

Addressing a programme in Guwahati on the birth centenary of Assam's first non-Congress CM Golap Borbora, he said the Centre's high-power demography mission, announced by PM Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech, is a definitive step towards studying the demographic pattern of the country and identifying 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 recounted how Borbora, who led a Janata Party government from March 1978 to September 1979 in the state, had undertaken a drive to cleanse the voters' list when by-elections were necessitated for the Mangaldai Lok Sabha seat.

"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 one which saw the beginning of the Assam Agitation," he said.

"The Election Commission is cleansing the voters' list through the SIR now, but some parties are opposing it. It shows the moral degradation in today's politics," he said. PTI SSG SOM