Hawzah News Agency - (New Delhi - India) - A few months ago, when India completed its seven-year effort to find illegal immigrants in the northeastern state of Assam, the results were hard to digest for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Hindu nationalist-backed party has made the rooting out and deportation of foreigners, through the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), one of its central pillars since its inception in 1980.

Party leaders claimed millions of Bangladeshi nationals had infiltrated the region, making Hindus a minority in various districts. But the exercise conducted under the supervision of the Supreme Court declared 1.9 million people doubtful citizens, for want of documents, out of a population of 39.9 million in Assam. To add salt to the wound, out of 1.9 million people, 1.1 million were Hindus and just 800,000 Muslims.

To reverse the embarrassment, the BJP-government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, brought amendments to the Citizenship Act to grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees, namely Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who arrived in India until 2014. The law was recently passed by India’s parliament.

This happened while 800,000 Muslims, left off the NRC list for want of documents or error in their names, continue to contest and appeal the NRC in the judiciary. If the high court also declares them doubtful citizens, they will be rendered stateless and a process for their deportation would begin. Nobody, however, so far knows, where they will be deported. Bangladesh has already declared it will not accept anyone.

Muslim leaders say that they had no issue with the law that grants citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighboring countries. But their worry stems from the fact that the new citizenship law is linked with the nationwide exercise of the NRC. The central government has already approved the nationwide National Population Register (NPR) at the cost of 83 billion rupees ($1.16 billion). After massive protests, even though Modi assured there would not be any nationwide NRC, the NPR document said it will be followed by an exercise of updating the register of citizens.

Prominent Muslim leader Asaduddin Owaisi claimed that low-level officers going door-to-door to conduct a census have been authorized to declare anyone a doubtful citizen if he or she is unable to produce documentary proof of citizenship.