RSS urges Centre to expedite border fencing works in NE

The RSS National Council meeting at Kelambakkam, 40 km from here, on Saturday expressed serious concern at the slow pace of ‘border fencing’ in Assam which it said is helping thousands of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh to enter India.

“This is a national problem, not an issue of Congress or the NDA; the Centre should check the borders immediately and take remedial steps through the border-fencing programme. During the previous NDA regime when L K Advani was Home Minister the situation was better; even now the fencing of the Bangladesh border is continuing, but we are not satisfied,” Sri Krishna Gopal, RSS All-India Joint General Secretary, told reporters after their deliberations on the second day.

Dwelling at length on a detailed resolution on the recent “violence in Assam and nationwide challenge of Bangladeshi infiltrators”, Gopal said the RSS’ ‘Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal (AKBM) – as the saffron organisation calls its National Council — “strongly demanded that the Centre and State governments, in the light of the Foreigners Act 1946 and the orders of the various courts including the Supreme Court, “should meticulously detect, deny citizenship facilities and deport all Bangladeshi infiltrators”.

Names of those persons who got themselves included in the voters list should be “deleted immediately”, the RSS said.

Gopal said a couple of official estimates, in reports presented to the President of India, have shown there were more than 1.27 crores ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’ in Assam and nearby places. He said the border is porous which is all the more reason to take urgent measures.

To a question, he said: “By Bangladeshis, we mean Muslim Bangaladeshis, who because of their expanding population and less land in their country are coming here to settle.”

Detailing the recent violent incidents in Assam, and its repercussions elsewhere, particularly the exodus of North-East people and students from other parts of the country notably cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai, he said all right-thinking sections of society should condemn the attempts to give it a ‘communal colour’ due to vote-bank politics.