Identification of illegal Bangla immigrants going on: Minister

Union Minister and senior BJP leader D V Sadananda Gowda today said the identification of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants is going on and it will take few more months to complete the process.

"Practically identification is going on... Certainly we are going to put an end to the problems of the illegal immigrants - to whom  citizenship should be given. This is under active consideration of the government. Two rounds of internal discussions have already taken place and hope it will take six months because it is a very sensitive issue," he told reporters here.

Referring to the issue of inclusion of enclaves in Assam in the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh, he said, "The identification of illegal immigrants which was undertaken by the government earlier, that has been dropped and the present actual place, location will be identified."

The Narendra Modi government had earlier decided to leave Assam out of the agreement following BJP state unit's objection. The party unit feared that the state would lose more territory than it would get from Bangladesh in exchange.

With the government planning to drop Assam from the LBA agenda, Congress-ruled Assam's Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had protested and demanded inclusion of Assam enclaves in the agreement. Congress raised the issue in Parliament and said it would not support the bill if Assam was kept out of it.

The government has been claiming that Congress had earlier opposed Assam enclaves to be included in the LBA but changed stance to outsmart BJP on the issue. Congress, however, has denied the charges.