Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday said that there has been a "massive increase" in attempts at illegal immigration from Bangladesh into Assam after Sheikh Hasina's ouster in August this year. He mentioned that all those who have been intercepted at the India-Bangladesh border are Muslims.
Sarma claimed that "infiltrators" are regularly being intercepted and pushed back from the border in Assam since August 2024. He added: "We have not detected any Hindu Bangladeshi in the last 5 months in Assam."
The firebrand BJP leader further noted that those who wanted to come must have come to India around 30-40 years back, calling them "patriotic Bangladeshis".
In the words of Sarma: "These are the people who do not want to leave Bangladesh. They must have some kind of affinity to the soil of the land. They must be patriotic Bangladeshis. Even after tremendous atrocity, they do not want to come out of Bangladesh because their forefathers were in that land. I think we should also not encourage them to come to India."
He further said that the Prime Minister is working overtime to create a condition of security in Bangladesh and Bangladeshi Hindus are acting in a mature manner.
Furthermore, the Assam CM mentioned that an analysis of the increased influx of Bangladeshis into the northeastern state pointed to the decline of the neighbouring country's textile industry, prompting workers to come to India.
"So, the labourers who earlier worked in the textile industry in Bangladesh are coming to India, and many textile factory owners within our country are incentivising this, giving a good amount of money for importing cheap labour illegally."
Commenting on rising cases of infiltration at the Indo-Bangladesh border, Sarma said most of the labourers working in the Bangladeshi textile industry were from the majority community.
"So influx has increased into India, and mostly these are from the so-called majority community of Bangladesh; in India, we treat them as a minority community. I think so far we have detained and pushed back around 1,000 infiltrators this year (2024)," he noted.
He also mentioned that this issue was raked up at the North East Council plenary in Tripura in December and the Assam government also raised it with the Union Home Ministry.