The Central government has expressed its inability before the Supreme Court to provide accurate data over the number of illegal immigrants currently residing in India on the grounds that such migrations happened in a secretive manner.
Filing an affidavit in the Apex Court, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Monday submitted that 14,346 foreign nationals were deported from the country between 2017 and 2022, and 17,861 migrants who had entered Assam between January 1966 and March 1971 were given Indian citizenship.
As per the affidavit, foreign nationals entered into the country without valid travel documents in a clandestine and surreptitious manner.
Their detection, detention and deportation was a complex ongoing process, it said, adding that it was not possible to collect accurate data of such illegal migrants staying in various parts of the country.
The Union Home Secretary further said in the affidavit that 32,381 persons were declared foreigners by orders of Foreigners Tribunals between the same period.
In the last five years, a sum of Rs 122 crore was released by the Central government towards the functioning of such tribunals, he added.
(Case title: In Re: Section 6A Citizenship Act 1955)
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