Last Updated:February 21, 2026, 20:25 IST

Amit Shah said that if large parts of India could be freed from Naxal violence, the country could also be made free of infiltration with sufficient political will.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah. (File photo)

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday launched a sharp attack on the Congress, alleging that illegal immigrants form the party’s “votebank” and asserting that the BJP would remove infiltrators not just from electoral rolls but from the country itself within the next five years.

Drawing a parallel with the government’s campaign against Left-wing extremism, Shah said that if large parts of India could be freed from Naxal violence, the country could also be made free of infiltration with sufficient political will.

Shah was speaking after laying the foundation stone for a new campus of the Assam Police 10th Battalion, which he said would be built on land reclaimed after eviction drives against illegal settlers.

Targeting Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Shah said the Opposition had repeatedly spoken about removing infiltrators but lacked the intent to act.

“Congress cannot remove them because illegal immigrants are their votebank,” he alleged.

He argued that eviction drives alone were not enough. “Driving infiltrators off encroached land only pushes the problem elsewhere. They must be identified and sent out of the country,” Shah said.

Referring to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls by the Election Commission, the home minister said the exercise would expose illegal immigrants, even as he accused Rahul Gandhi of opposing the process.

“Protests and rhetoric will not stop the identification of infiltrators,” he remarked.

Shah alleged that decades of Congress rule had endangered Assam’s identity, claiming its policies had undermined the state’s “jati, mati and bheti”, people, land and foundation.

He accused the party of encouraging infiltration, leading to demographic changes in several districts.

He credited the BJP-led Assam government under Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma with reclaiming more than one lakh bighas of encroached land and said a further five lakh bighas would be cleared over the next five years if the party returned to power.

However, he stressed that land recovery alone would not solve the issue unless infiltrators were deported.

“If the BJP is voted back to power, we will identify every infiltrator and remove them from the country,” Shah said, adding that such action required “courage, determination and political will”, which he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi possessed.

The home minister also claimed that infiltration posed a national security risk and said it was symbolic that a police battalion campus would come up on land where illegal settlers had earlier been encouraged to stay.

Elections to the 126-member Assam Assembly are expected to be held in March-April.

Read More