Congress opened doors to infiltrators: Ram Madhav

BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav on Friday launched a scathing attack on the Congress alleging that it was the Congress government at the Centre in 1967 that opened the country's doors to infiltrators.

"Who allowed infiltrators in large numbers into India, especially the Northeast? It was the Congress government at the Centre, which in 1967 repealed the Prevention of Infiltration from Pakistan Act and opened India's doors to infiltrators from East Pakistan and West Pakistan. 

"Large numbers of infiltrators from East Pakistan entered into Assam and other northeastern states," Ram Madhav told a press conference here.

He also accused the former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government of backing out from updating the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in 2010. 

"When the NRC was to be prepared through a pilot project in 2010, the infiltrators engineered protests against it. Citing those anti-NRC protests as an excuse, the Tarun Gogoi government halted the NRC update," he said.

"It is the BJP government led by Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal that has revived the NRC update. It is on the verge of completion now. How can they who backed out from the NRC update, preach us on it now?" the BJP leader asked.

He said that it was the Congress which was harming the interests of the Northeast and the country as a whole. "We are committed to protect the identity, culture and heritage of the people of the region and we are going to implement Clause 6 of the Assam Accord," he said.

Ram Madhav said that his party was confident of winning all the 10 Lok Sabha seats it had decided to contest in the Northeast. 

"The Congress does not exist in a large part of the country, including in the Northeast, where it is either the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) partners," he said.

Clause 6 of the Assam Accord envisages that appropriate constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.IANS