KOLKATA, India (AFP) — India has deported nearly 5,000 Bangladeshi citizens since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist party swept to power in West Bengal last month, according to official statistics.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a sweeping victory in elections in the eastern border state of more than 100 million people, promising to “detect, delete and deport” illegal migrants.
India shares a long and porous border with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where migration has historically been driven by economic hardship and longstanding family links.
On taking power, a mainly Muslim people who fled persecution in Myanmar.
State Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, speaking in the capital Kolkata on Sunday, said nearly 5,000 Bangladeshi citizens had been deported across the border.
“We have started the work of deporting Bangladeshi infiltrators who do not fall under the purview of the Citizenship Amendment Act,” Adhikari said, saying the government had “established holding centers in all districts of the state” in May.
“From these centers, 4,800 Bangladeshi infiltrators have already been deported so far,” he added.