Agartala, June 15 (IANS) The Tipra Motha Party (TMP), a tribal based party and an ally of the ruling BJP, demanded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention to identify and push back all illegal Bangladeshi immigrants living in Tripura to the neighbouring country.

The TMP, headed by former royal scion Pradyot Bikram Manikya Debbarma, often organised agitations and rallies demanding urgent action by the government to detect and deport illegal migrants, specifically Bangladeshis and Rohingyas.

Senior TMP leader Animesh Debbarma, who is also the state’s Forest, Environment, Science and Technology Minister, said that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently asked all the states, especially the bordering states, to identify the illegal foreign nationals and deport them to their countries.

“As per the Indira-Mujib accord, anyone who came to India after March 24, 1971, is an illegal settler. There are many people in Tripura who came after this date and are illegally living in the state,” the tribal leader told IANS.

A 15-member delegation of the TMP, led by Debbarma, met Tripura Governor Indra Sena Reddy Nallu on Saturday at the Raj Bhavan and submitted a memorandum, seeking the Prime Minister’s immediate intervention to deport the illegal infiltrators to Bangladesh and other countries. Debbarma said the Central government can send a task force to the state to deal with the infiltrator issue.

He expressed concern over the change of the demographic pattern in Tripura and strongly said, “We cannot allow the illegal infiltrators to stay in the state illegally”. Quoting the government records, Debbarma said that the state had accepted 6.09 lakh people who had migrated from Bangladesh for various reasons during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The Mobile Task Force (MTF) unit of Tripura Police must be more proactive in identifying and deporting the illegal foreign nationals, the TMP leader said.

Meanwhile, the MHA in its May 19 directives has advised all state governments and union territories to constitute Special Task Forces (STFs) in every district to identify and deport illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya migrants within 30 days. The MHA directive, issued in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that claimed 26 lives, has given state governments a free hand to carry out the operation in coordination with central agencies.

–IANS

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