By Scroll Staff
The Bharatiya Janata Party will replicate Assam’s “detect, delete and deport” model to expel “Bangladeshi infiltrators” in West Bengal if voted to power in the state, PTI quoted party chief Nitin Nabin as saying on Monday.
Nabin was referring to Assam’s strategy of identifying suspected undocumented immigrants, deleting their names from electoral rolls and deporting them.
The comment came ahead of the Assembly elections in West Bengal, which are expected to take place in April or May.
Since April 2025, the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.
Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.
On Monday, speaking at a rally in Islampur in West Bengal’s Malda district, Nabin claimed that the model will be implemented “wherever these foreigners are eating into the rights of our own citizens”, the news agency reported.
Referring to the recent deletion of voters in West Bengal as part of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls, the BJP chief claimed that the Election Commission had taken away the voting rights of “more than 50 lakh Bangladeshi infiltrators” in the state.
On Saturday, the Election Commission published the electoral roll for West Bengal, indicating the exclusion of more than 61 lakh voters.
However, the process continues with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining “under adjudication” based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.
“If names of 50 lakh Bangladeshis weren’t deleted by the EC, then the Centre’s welfare schemes, meant for the people of Bengal, would have benefited the infiltrators,” PTI quoted the BJP chief as saying on Monday.
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