Will expel all illegal immigrants by 2024 polls: Amit Shah

Chakradharpur/Baharagora: Setting a deadline for the first time for a nation-wide implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said the government would drive out all "illegal immigrants" before 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

"I assure you NRC will be implemented across the country and all infiltrators identified and expelled before 2024 polls," Shah said at a rally in Jharkhand ahead of the second phase elections.

Notwithstanding the admission by some BJP leaders in Bengal that apprehensions over the NRC had cost the party dearly in the recent bypolls there, the Union Home minister told poll rallies in neighbouring Jharkhand that the countrywide exercise will be conducted despite reservations voiced by Opposition parties.

"Today, I want to tell you that before the 2024 polls the NRC will be conducted across the country and each and every infiltrator identified and expelled.

"Rahul Baba (Congress leader Rahul Gandhi) says don't expel them. Where will they go, what will they eat? But I assure you that before the country goes to polls in 2024 all illegal immigrants will be thrown out," he told election rallies in Chakradharpur and Baharagora.

Shah said national issues like uprooting terrorism, Naxalism and construction of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya were as important in the Jharkhand elections as local matters like development.

Raking up the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri mosque dispute once again, the BJP president alleged the Congress made attempts to thwart the hearing of the case in the Supreme Court.

He also attacked the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance, which is crossing swords with the BJP for electoral laurel in Jharkhand.