NEW DELHI, July 22 ? The issue of illegal Bangladeshi nationals has turned into a major political controversy with BJP today deploring Chief Minister, Tarun Gogoi for writing to the Prime Minister questioning the figures. Briefing newsmen, BJP spokesman Vijay Malhotra termed the Chief Minister?s action as most unfortunate, asserting that there was ample evidence of presence of a large number of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the country.
In this connection, he referred to the previous Governor, Lt General (retd) SK Sinha?s ?thought provoking? report to the Centre on the issue of illegal immigrants. Sri Malhotra maintained that the figures given by Union Minister of State for Home, Sriprakash Jaiswal was on the lower side. He cited the example of Delhi where he claimed lakhs of illegal Bangladeshis were living. On being asked why the previous NDA Government failed to detect and deport them, he blamed it on the Congress Party asserting that whenever Government tried to act, the Congress Party opposed. The Union Minister in a written reply to a question had mentioned that around 1.20 crore illegal Bangladeshis were residing in the country as on 2001, out of which 50 lakh were in Assam.