Caravan News
BENGALURU — The state Home Minister of Karnataka Basavaraj Bommai said on Thursday, the BJP government in Karnataka is considering preparing an Assam-like National Register of Citizens (NRC) list in the state. He said the government is collecting information on immigrants in the state and will proceed on working toward NRC after a discussion with the central government.
“A very big talk is going on regarding the implementation of NRC across India. Karnataka is one of the states where people from across the border are coming and settling down. There are lots of issues here. Therefore we are collecting all the information. We will discuss with the Union Home Minister and then go ahead,” Mr Bommai said.
The Karnataka government has already held two meetings on the issue, the state home minister had said on Wednesday.
Bommai’s comments on the citizenship screening exercise come after Union home minister Amit Shah’s repeated call for a nationwide NRC.
Home Minister Amit Shah recently said that the NRC exercise will be conducted throughout the country and all illegal immigrants will be “thrown out”.
Several other party leaders from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Tripura have also demanded the exercise across the country.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has promised that she will not let the centre conduct the NRC exercise in the state.
In August, the final NRC list in Assam was published and 19 lakh people including 12 lakh Hindus were omitted from it. They will not be called foreigners until they have exhausted their legal options, the centre had said.
(With inputs from PTI)
